Re: Another use for ldap--comments?

[John Lederer <johnl@ibm.net>]

The reasons for ldap:

Cheap
Standards based
Has built in (or will soon) replication and referral standards
Can get base functionality by using URL's directly
LDIF easily understandable and usable

Michael Helm wrote:

> John Lederer writes:
> > What a group of us would like to do is to create a worldwide LDAP
> > server than can resolve a case cite to a URL where that case can be
>
> > The question I am seeking advice on is how to handle the parallel
> > cites.  There are three different cites for the case.  I would like
> > to be able to input any of the three, get the URL, and the other two
>
> I have an interest in problems of this sort too.
>
> I'm not sure it's really a schema problem (in the ldap sense)
> but a DIT and modelling problem.  What you want to build is
> a catalogue, maybe?
>
> How about, arbitrary DN's
> made of of some randmonly generated number or hash of the
> case content (unique primary key)
> dn: cn=a32187bcdef987654321,o=something
> attributes like
> citation: wisc-123
> citation: wisc-456
> caseurl: (url pointer to the resource)
> + other things
>
> This allows your back end to search on citation, & the directory server to
> be indexed on citation.
>
> Now why would you choose ldap for this?  Cheap?  Easy/required to
> replicate?  Or do you intend to embed the "back end" in the client software?
> (trying to determine when an RDBMS would stop being the better
> choice).