[CalendarServer-users] calendar user address

[Cyrus Daboo]

Hi Mark,

--On November 25, 2008 12:41:18 AM -0500 Mark Cockfield 
<mark.cockfield at gmail.com> wrote:

> The norm seems to be to use an email address, how do people handle the
> case where a calendar user's email address changes? It seems to me that
> every calendar object in the repository where the user is an organizer or
> an attendee would have to be updated. If I understand the specs correctly
> you could use a urn scheme except that iMIP requires a mailto.

Typically in an organization when a user's email address changes what often 
happens is that they end up with two addresses: the new one and the old 
one, with the new one being the "preferred" one. This is to ensure that for 
some period of time the old email address will continue to work (e.g. when 
replying to email addresses composed with the old address).

The calendar server does support multiple calendar user addresses and so, 
in the above scenario, no changes would be needed if the old and new email 
addresses are setup properly.

That said, there are situations where maintaining the old address is not 
feasible, and in that case something will need to be done. We have already 
discussed the idea of have the server re-write calendar data on the way 
into and out of the calendar store. We would change all mailto addresses to 
urn:uuid on the way in (client PUT), and change them back to the (current) 
mailto on the way out (client GET). That way the client always sees the 
most up to date address. There are several problems with this - in 
particular the need to force all clients to refresh their cached data when 
an address does change - that will require some clever ETag invalidation 
process.

For now though, the best option is to maintain the old and new email 
addresses.

-- 
Cyrus Daboo