I understand were you're going, and I like the idea, but this will break many of my customer's apps, and will make setting up replication from the user's point of view a bit more difficult.
The reasons I vote against.

I agree with the idea, but it doesn't go far enough. Breaking them up without a reliable, policy-driven, way to replicate and secure them actually puts us in a worse place than we are now.

To me, separating everything out into separate NSFs without a reliable way to backup and recover the NSFs is just as 'horrific' as craming them into the mailfile.
I'm all for doing what you with IF it's part of a policy manageable process. Otherwise - cram it into the mail file - at least I can then much more easily protect and recover the user's data.

I assumed (I know, NEVER ASSUME) that configuration, replication setup, and policy management would be be a given.

-Devin.

@4 - Hmmm, it's not there now. I don't see it as a given unless it's pushed.

You can create a new replica of a user's mail via policy. I don't think it would be that big of a deal to add more databases to that.

@6 - indeed, but just creating the replica is a tiny part of the puzzle. The client has to be conf'd to actually use it and that requires other policy pieces-parts. As an example, creating a local replica of the mail file does not config the client to actually use it.

Uncertain about this one ... Won't Notes 8's way of making the contacts auto-replicating (or something ...) the contact management much better?

In R8, you can configure the contacts (local names.nsf) to replicate with the mail file via the replicator tab. This is a huge leap forward.

Previously, we used the OpenNTF1.7b Mail Experience template, which has a contacts view. In the contacts view, there was a "synch contacts" view that would synch the contacts view with local names.nsf. Sadly, this could not be automated.

In some cases, we place copies of the user's local names.nsf on the server, so that they can access the contacts from remote locations (if they don't have a laptop).

This is a real pain.

I like the R8 method best.

To implement this correctly would be a great effort for IBM, but for the long term I think it would be a much more flexible solution.
It will reduce:
- complexity of the mail file design
- more easily faciltate security regarding delegation etc.
- remove the need for synching iNotes contacts with Personal NAB (which imo is a pain, even with the new option on replicator).

This off course only works if the replicator contains default entries for Mail, Calendar and Contacts.