LDAP <-> SQL/RDBMS mappings - possible solution

[Dmitry Kovalev <mitya@seismic.geol.msu.ru>]

Hello!

Occasionally I looked through this list archives, and found several
relatively recent discussions on LDAP, RDBMS, their synchronization and
interaction... I wish I've done it earlier...

The point is that some time ago I contributed relatively general-purpose
backend which handles RDBMS to LDAP mapping (back-sql).
It is available via OpenLDAP CVS server in development branch. There's
also some documentation there (I could post it here, or send it
privately to those interested). Announcements were made at
openldap-devel maillist and ITS, unfortunately not in this list...

It seems to be a good candidate as something to start with, because it
can handle situations with updates from both LDAP and RDBMS-side, works
with variety of RDBMSes on both Un*x and Win32, and is transparent (and
ready for) to standard replication scheme using slurpd (this usage
constraints that modifications are made through LDAP only).

Key feature is that it does not constrain any specific RDBMS schema - it
in most cases can handle MAPPING of RDBMS schema into more or less
standard and convenient LDAP schema. Performance depends on RDBMS schema
- more indexes, better design - better performance :)

As soon as I have a little time for it, I will commit several changes
(bugfixes, increased tuning capabilities, more sampled RDBMSes)

More documentation and samples are available through CVS (see OpenLDAP
site for details)? and by email upon request to me (at
mit@openldap.org). If you are interested, have any questions,
suggestions etc. - please mail, or post followups...


WBW, Dmitry