Gold mailer

Abstract

The goal of the Gold project is to implement a set of tools to interoperate with unstructured and semistructured data and services. We have selected the electronic mail domain as the first scenario in which to implement and demonstrate some of the tools. This paper describes the Gold Mailer, a system that provides users with an integrated way to send and receive messages using different media (e-mail, faxes, phones), efficiently store and retrieve these messages, and access a variety of sources of other useful information. Our mailer solves the problems of information overload, organization of messages and multiple interfaces. By providing good storage and retrieval facilities, it can be used as a powerful information processing engine covering a range of useful office information. Unlike some recent research efforts ([Ter90, KTO88, LMY89]) which have implemented mailers with relational-like query facilities, the Gold mailer provides a database system interface that fits more naturally. This document explains the current implementation of the Gold mailer.