MIME Map Processing for Efficient Message Access
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Solution Overview
Problem
The inefficiency in processing MIME formatted email messages due to repeated parsing, modifying, and reformating during delivery in distributed systems, leading to time-consuming and resource-intensive operations.
Innovation Solution
Generating a MIME map that represents the structure and content of a MIME message, allowing for efficient access and modification of message body content without parsing the entire message, using tags to map locations within the message, and updating the map to reflect changes, thereby reducing resource utilization and processing time.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If the MIME message is parsed, modified, and reconstructed multiple times during delivery processing, then the message can be virus-scanned, converted, and formatted for different processors, but the processing time and resource consumption increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The MIME message is segmented into two parts: the original message stored in a database and a MIME map containing tags that reference portions of the message. This segmentation allows the system to process only the small MIME map instead of the entire large message, significantly improving processing efficiency while maintaining the ability to access and modify specific message portions.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of repeatedly parsing and processing the original MIME message, the system creates a compact copy in the form of a MIME map that contains tags mapping to message portions. This copy is much smaller and can be processed efficiently multiple times without affecting the original message, resolving the contradiction between processing versatility and efficiency.
2Ease of operation
If the entire MIME message is loaded into memory for processing, then all message content is available for modification and access, but memory consumption increases for large messages
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts only the essential structural information from the MIME message and stores it in the MIME map as tags. These tags contain references to specific portions of the message without duplicating the actual message content in memory. This extraction approach maintains ease of access to message portions while dramatically reducing memory consumption.
Solution Approach 2:
The system transitions from a one-dimensional approach of loading the entire message into memory to a two-dimensional approach where the MIME map exists as a separate, compact structure that references the original message stored in a database. This dimensional change allows efficient access without requiring the entire message to reside in memory simultaneously.
3Reliability
If the MIME message is stored in its original format, then the message integrity is maintained for decryption, but the message size is large and processing is inefficient
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary action by creating the MIME map in advance, which contains all the tag information needed for efficient message access and processing. This preliminary structure allows subsequent processing operations to work with the small MIME map rather than the large original message, reducing processing time while the original message remains intact in the database for integrity preservation.
Data Source
AI summary
A MIME or XML formatted message is stored and a map is processed in place of a message. The map is a compact representation of the message. The map is indicative of the content and structure of the message. The map comprises tags that map to and are indicative of portions of the message. When a portion of the message is to be accessed, the associated tag in the map is processed to determine the location of the associated portion of the message, and the associated portion of the message is accessed at the location. To allow accurate decryption of signed messages, the format of the message is preserved.