Internet Message Store Events
RFC 5423

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Network Working Group                                         R. Gellens
Request for Comments: 5423                                 QUALCOMM Inc.
Category: Standards Track                                      C. Newman
                                                        Sun Microsystems
                                                              March 2009

                     Internet Message Store Events

Status of This Memo

   This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
   Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
   improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
   Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
   and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2009 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents in effect on the date of
   publication of this document (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info).
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.

Abstract

   One of the missing features in the existing Internet mail and
   messaging standards is a facility for server-to-server and server-to-
   client event notifications related to message store events.  As the
   scope of Internet mail expands to support more diverse media (such as
   voice mail) and devices (such as cell phones) and to provide rich
   interactions with other services (such as web portals and legal
   compliance systems), the need for an interoperable notification
   system increases.  This document attempts to enumerate the types of
   events that interest real-world consumers of such a system.

   This document describes events and event parameters that are useful
   for several cases, including notification to administrative systems
   and end users.  This is not intended as a replacement for a message
   access facility such as IMAP.

Gellens & Newman            Standards Track                     [Page 1]
RFC 5423             Internet Message Store Events            March 2009

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
     1.1.  Conventions Used in This Document  . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.  Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   3.  Event Model  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   4.  Event Types  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     4.1.  Message Addition and Deletion  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     4.2.  Message Flags  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     4.3.  Access Accounting  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
     4.4.  Mailbox Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   5.  Event Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   6.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   7.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   8.  Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   9.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     9.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     9.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   Appendix A.  Future Extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

1.  Introduction

   A message store is used to organize Internet Messages [RFC5322] into
   one or more mailboxes (possibly hierarchical), annotate them in
   various ways, and provide access to these messages and associated
   metadata.  Three different standards-based protocols have been widely
   deployed to remotely access a message store.  The Post Office
   Protocol (POP) [RFC1939] provides simple download-and-delete access
   to a single mail drop (which is a subset of the functionality
   typically associated with a message store).  The Internet Message
   Access Protocol (IMAP) [RFC3501] provides an extensible feature-rich
   model for online, offline, and disconnected access to a message store
   with minimal constraints on any associated "fat-client" user
   interface.  Finally, mail access applications built on top of the
   Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) [RFC2616] that run in standards-
   based web browsers provide a third standards-based access mechanism
   for online-only access.

   While simple and/or ad-hoc mechanisms for notifications have sufficed
   to some degree in the past (e.g., "Simple New Mail Notification"
   [RFC4146], "IMAP4 IDLE Command" [RFC2177]), as the scope and
   importance of message stores expand, the demand for a more complete
   store notification system increases.  Some of the driving forces
   behind this demand include:

   o  Mobile devices with intermittent network connectivity that have