Newbie philosophical questions

[<dev@archonet.com>]

I've been working through the various FAQs and HOWTOs while building an
address-book for Outlook/Express + Netscape with a web front-end (available
under GPL/BSD licence). I've got the functionality working but I'm not sure
on the approach to a couple of things.

For my dn I was using cn=John Smith, o=Mycompany, c=UK which is simple but
prevents you having two "John Smith"s. So - I've changed to using a numeric
id number. I generate this in the web application - is this the right
approach or is there a way to get slapd to generate IDs for me?

Secondly, am I right in thinking there's no way to lock an entry to provide
atomic updates?

Finally - rather than deleting entries outright I'd like to mark them and
have the equivalent of a Trash folder so people can retrieve entries they
shouldn't have deleted. AFAICT I can either add a "deleted" attribute or
move them to a separate "trash" branch. Is either of these the "accepted"
way of doing things or is it just a matter of taste?

TIA people

Oh - if anyone wants the early version of the address-book it's at
http://www.archonet.com/addrbook/

- Richard Huxton
  Archonet Ltd