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Concluded WG IMAP QRESYNC Extension (qresync)

Note: The data for concluded WGs is occasionally incorrect.

WG Name IMAP QRESYNC Extension
Acronym qresync
Area Applications Area (app)
State Concluded
Charter charter-ietf-qresync-01 Approved
Document dependencies
Additional resources Issue tracker, Wiki
Personnel Chairs Dave Cridland, Eliot Lear
Area Director Barry Leiba
Mailing list Address imapext@ietf.org
To subscribe https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/imapext
Archive https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/imapext

Final Charter for Working Group

The Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), defined in RFC 3501,
specifies a protocol for accessing email messages on a server that
implements a message store from a client. It also includes commands for
manipulating the message store -- creating, deleting, and renaming
mailboxes, adding a message to a mailbox, and copying messages from one
mailbox to another.

Base IMAP as described in RFC 3501 requires that in order to discover
flag changes and expunged messages in a mailbox, the client has to fetch
flags for all messages it knows in the mailbox and compare returned
results with its own state.

This can generate a significant amount of traffic for big mailboxes. The
IMAP CONDSTORE extension (RFC 4551) provides a facility for IMAP clients
to quickly resynchronize mailbox flag changes in a mailbox. The IMAP
QRESYNC extension (RFC 5162) extends CONDSTORE to also cover expunged
messages, and reduces the number of round trips needed to resynchronize
by extending the SELECT/EXAMINE command.

The CONDSTORE and QRESYNC extensions are deployed in both clients and
servers. These deployments have exposed errors and clarity issues in
the specifications, and they need correcting. The IMAP QRESYNC
Extension working group has the task of updating CONDSTORE and QRESYNC
extensions on the Standards Track.

The working group might produce one (combined) or two separate documents
(as now) updating these extensions. The working group will review errata
and update the documents as needed to incorporate those, and will
correct significant errors and inconsistencies, but will keep changes at
this stage to a minimum and avoid incompatible changes.

No other IMAP extension work is in scope for this working group.

Milestones

Date Milestone Associated documents
Dec 2013 Request publication on updated qresync/condstore spec(s)