RE: Proxy/caching forwarder for LDAP?

["Howard Chu" <hyc@highlandsun.com>]

> I've been considering writing a quick, throwable caching forwarder
> for openldap (protocol v2, obviously).
>
> I've been wondering what would be involved, and if anyone has a
> description or roadmap to what a minimal implementation would be.
> I haven't decided whether it would use stable (persistent) storage
> or just a memory based cache.
>
> My thoughts are that it would be useful for small, modular, short-lived
> processes than tend to get the same data over and over again in a
> short amount of time (such as a user profile, for example) but don't
> necessarily modify that info.

I'm not sure I totally understood what this is describing, but I've had
some similar ideas about a cache. I suppose it would make sense in a proxy
slapd, same as for DNS servers. But how would you configure
expiration/lifetimes for cached entries? In DNS, the supplier/master tells
you. What would you do in LDAP? Just configure a default expiration, and
special cases for particular subtrees?