Re: LDAP vs. SQL

[Medi Montaseri <medi@sanlight.com>]

To chose between a Relational or Hierarchical database, you need to
look at  your application (or data).

If there is a higher degree of orthagonolity between elements, then
relational
is better. If you have more commonality among elements, which yield
reusability
then hierarchical is better.

For example, organizations are usually formed hierarchically. There is a
boss,
some managers, and some doers. This would best be represented in a
hierarchical
database, hence LDAP.

On the other hand, Students, Classes, and Faculties are orthogonol. And
an RDBMS is better.

One also consideres maintainability. Relational Databases are easy to
maintain
or extend. Just through in another table or collection of tables. But in
the hierarchical
database what you add better be part of something else. And what you
remove better
not damage the subtree below it or not damage the code accessing the
sub-tree.

That is my current understanding of things....

Jon Parise wrote:

> I know this has been hashed out here a few times before (archives),
> but I'm looking for some more specific opinions.
>
> I'll be modeling a large user accounting databaase (from scratch,
> no legacy data structures), and I want to get it as "right" as
> possible the first time around.
>
> Right now, I'm leaning toward storing all of the user's entries
> (basically, user profiles) in LDAP.  The user will have arbitrary
> relationships established between them (basically groupings and
> parent-children heirarchies).  I was thinking of using an SQL
> database to maintain these relationships between the LDAP entries.
>
> At this point, I wonder whether it might just be easier overall to
> just model everything in SQL.  I'd really prefer to keep the
> benefits of LDAP, though (specifically the replication
> capabilities).
>
> Oh, and the SQL server is question is MySQL.
>
> Has anyone modeled a similar system?  Nothing is implemented yet,
> so if I'm totally off the deep end here, hopefully someone will let
> me know. =)
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Jon Parise (jon@csh.rit.edu)  .  Rochester Inst. of Technology
> http://www.csh.rit.edu/~jon/  :  Computer Science House Member

--
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Medi Montaseri, Software Eng, medi@sanlight.com
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