Re: preserve value order with referential integrity overlay?

[Pierangelo Masarati <ando@sys-net.it>]

Zhang Weiwu wrote:

> The misuse of this is first introduced by being able to have multiple
> values of telephone number, where we always put the primary number the
> first one and it worked several years.

against the specs, which warned you about not relying on this.

> Later we used businessCategory
> which also have strict order requirements and that worked several years.

same as above.

> So I begin to think I can do the same to companyRepresentative. Call me
> stupid or having not learnt true spirit of LDAP, I learn by starting
> with some theory

actually, the theory taught you not to do so.

> and complete most of the theory with self experience,
> this worked with almost all other IT systems except LDAP. I don't know
> why. In LDAP world things often arranged different than my
> understanding.

Trial and error may be good when you have no alternatives.  I understand
LDAP may have a steep learning curve when non-trivial things need to be
dealt with.  So I'd recommend you take this opportunity to give up "bad
habits based on experience" and try to stick with specs, instead of
trying to force OpenLDAP into letting you preserve them.

In the LDAP world, you'd need to define your own
"myPreferredTelephoneNumber" and put the preferred telephone number
there as well as in the telephoneNumber, so that it can be collected
both ways.  Or, if the dumbest client you need to stick with is the one
that wants the preferred number in the telephoneNumber attribute, leave
it there, and add a "myAlternateTelephoneNumber" containing the
perferred as well as the non preferred ones.

Going down the X-ORDERED trail would probably mean lots of pain.  We
needed to introduce it as a quick and reliable way to force ordering for
internal purposes, but it is very unlikely that normal clients (I mean:
clients whose sources you can't or don't want to modify) will be willing
to cooperate with it.

p.



Ing. Pierangelo Masarati
OpenLDAP Core Team

SysNet s.r.l.
via Dossi, 8 - 27100 Pavia - ITALIA
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