Akonadi
Encyclopedia
Akonadi is a storage service for personal information management
(PIM) data and metadata
named after the oracle goddess of justice in Ghana
. It is one of the “pillars” (core technologies) behind the KDE SC 4 project, although it is designed to be used in any desktop environment. It is extensible and provides concurrent read, write, and query access.
Akonadi provides unique desktop-wide object identification and retrieval. It functions as an extensible data storage for all PIM applications. In KDE 3
each PIM application had different data storage and handling methods, which led to several implementations of essentially the same features. Besides data storage, Akonadi has several other components including search, and a library (cache) for easy access and notification of data changes.
Akonadi communicates with servers to fetch and send data instead of applications through a specialized API. Data can then be retrieved from Akonadi by a model
designed to collect a specific data (mail, calendar, contacts, etc.). The application itself is made of viewers and editors to display data to the user and let them input data. Akonadi also supports metadata created by applications.
Because Akonadi takes care of data storage and retrieval, which are traditionally the difficult parts of creating a PIM application, development of PIM applications is made much easier. In fact, the Mailody
developer Tom Albers demonstrated how a mail reader could be created in only 10 minutes using Akonadi.
Personal information management
Personal information management refers to the practice and the study of the activities people perform in order to acquire, organize, maintain, retrieve and use information items such as documents , web pages and email messages for everyday use to complete tasks and fulfill a person’s various...
(PIM) data and metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
named after the oracle goddess of justice in Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
. It is one of the “pillars” (core technologies) behind the KDE SC 4 project, although it is designed to be used in any desktop environment. It is extensible and provides concurrent read, write, and query access.
Akonadi provides unique desktop-wide object identification and retrieval. It functions as an extensible data storage for all PIM applications. In KDE 3
KDE 3
K Desktop Environment 3 was the third series of releases of the K Desktop Environment . There were six major releases in this series.-K Desktop Environment 3.0:...
each PIM application had different data storage and handling methods, which led to several implementations of essentially the same features. Besides data storage, Akonadi has several other components including search, and a library (cache) for easy access and notification of data changes.
Akonadi communicates with servers to fetch and send data instead of applications through a specialized API. Data can then be retrieved from Akonadi by a model
Model-view-controller
Model–view–controller is a software architecture, currently considered an architectural pattern used in software engineering. The pattern isolates "domain logic" from the user interface , permitting independent development, testing and maintenance of each .Model View Controller...
designed to collect a specific data (mail, calendar, contacts, etc.). The application itself is made of viewers and editors to display data to the user and let them input data. Akonadi also supports metadata created by applications.
Because Akonadi takes care of data storage and retrieval, which are traditionally the difficult parts of creating a PIM application, development of PIM applications is made much easier. In fact, the Mailody
Mailody
Mailody is an e-mail client for the KDE Platform by Tom Albers.Mailody has been discontinued. Tom Albers deleted it in the spring of 2010.Unlike a complete mail client like KMail, the current stable version only works with the IMAP protocol, and does not support POP3.The next version of Mailody was...
developer Tom Albers demonstrated how a mail reader could be created in only 10 minutes using Akonadi.