Re: ASN.1-BER/DER

[Giovanni Baruzzi <giovanni.baruzzi@allianz-leben.de>]

Mikael wrote:

> Dear Kurt,
> first of all; thank you for the rapid response.
>
> "Kurt D. Zeilenga" wrote:
>
> > At 12:55 PM 11/23/99 +0100, you wrote:
> > >I have written a system that should handle incoming ldap strings (open,
> > >bind, search e.t.c.)
> > >and translate these into requests towards out (flat) Btrieve database.
> >
> > Might be easier to just write a custom backend to an existing
> > LDAP server.
> >
>
> We have been looking for LDAPv3 servers that we could use but either
> they
> are VERY expensive or they dont support ldap version 3. The free ldap
> servers also cannot use a flat database, they need berkley database or
> some
> other specific database as storage platform.
> This is what I've heard so far.
> Am I wrong about this?
> The best would ofcourse be to implement a existing LDAPv3 server and
> 'attach' it to out database. But we cannot change database.
>
> If you think that we could use OpenLDAP on NT4.0 and connect it to out
> flat database (Btrieve) which contains all the leaves in the directory
> then it would be great.
>

Well, I think that Kurt pointed you in the right direction. Have you got a
look to the "scripting Back End"?
In the scripting back end the routines that LDAP uses to access the database
are just scripts. You cann access every type of Database; even a text file.
(BTrieve ist much, much more than a flat file.


Best Regards
G. Baruzzi




>
> > The messages are encoded using
> > a subset of ASN.1 Basic Encoding Rules.  RSA provides a nice guide
> > to ASN.1, BER, and DER at:
> >   ftp://ftp.rsasecurity.com/pub/pkcs/ascii/layman.asc
> >
> > >In what format are these incoming strings???
> >
> > The octet steam is a series of BER sequences.
> >
>
> Ok thanks, I need to read more about octet strings and BER seq.
>
> >
> >
> > >Does these ldap string correspond to the ldap-URL syntax format (so I
> > >can interpret them to real(?) requests)???
> >
> > No.
> >
>
> Ok.
>
> >
> >
> > >Greatful for any help!
> > >PS! If any other developer are working with the same problem and would
> > >like to cooperate then please contact me. DS!
> >
> > Very few developers work at the octet stream level when developing
> > applications using protocols based upon ASN.1.  There is very little
> > reason to reimplement BER/DER.
>
> I guess that we should look for a compiler for translation of incoming
> tcp/ip 'strings' and convert them into ldapMessage structure.
> >
> > Kurt
>
> --
> Sincerely
> Mikael