Re: Support for Netscape Directory Server Plug-in API (SLAPI)

["Booker C. Bense" <bbense@networking.stanford.edu>]

On Wed, 5 Sep 2001, Steve Omrani wrote:

> Should slapi or a subset of slapi be added to openldap?
> I would like to get a discussion going on the subject. Your
> participation is strongly encouraged.
>

- I think it's a pretty powerful tool, but I'm not sure
if the "game is worth the lantern" so to speak. The biggest
advantage I can think of is that it provides a consistant
interface for sharing "features" without having to constantly
patch the Openldap src. In some sense the "backend api"
already covers this ground, all you would need to add is
a way to dynamically load them.

- I wrote to the Netscape API about 3 years ago for the NS 3.x ldap
server to emulate the Umich style kerberos bind. My feeling at the
time was that the interface didn't expose quite enough to be useful.
>From what I could see, it wasn't possible to write a real SASL Method
since there was no way to have a 3-way conversion from the plugin api.
Basically, you could only do some variation of EXTERNAL.

- If you are talking about changing OpenLdap so that modules
written to the Netscape API could just "drop in", I think that
a large portion could be written as a kind of "backend", but
there are certain parts (i.e. the SASL stuff ) that don't
fit conviently into ldap's "backend" model.

- Booker C. Bense