Grousing DBF Files With OpenLDAP (back-sql, back-perl, etc...)

[Adam Tauno Williams <adam@morrison-ind.com>]

First off, I have a wondefully functional collection of OpenLDAP 2.0.x servers 
performing innumerable tasks on my network:  PAM, NSS, Samba, DNS/bind, ILS, 
Apache authentication, Squid authentication, shared address books, Horde 
preference store, and probably a couple of things I don't remember.  All this 
with the back-ldbm; works flawlessly and performance is excellent.

Thanks to all the OpenLDAP team.

But now I've had unique and nasty problem thrown on my plate.

We have a CRM system which runs on Win32 that stores contact information 
in .DBF files (Yea, I know - Ick!).  These are Dbase IV type files and I can 
read them on a Win32 box via the ODBC drivers that come with M$-Office.

The actual datafiles reside on a RedHat Linux Samba server,  shared to the 
client workstations.  There is also an NT4 box that runs a process unattended 
that utilizes this data.

What I need to do is somehow present the data from these files (name, address, 
phone, fax, e-mail) via LDAP to mail clients.

These files change ALOT and I'd love to avoid doing a periodic-sync/dump thing.

I've looked all over for a DBF ODBC driver for Linux so I could try and use 
back-sql, but haven't turned anything up.  Also don't know if DBF is actually 
SQL-ish enough to work with back-sql (no views, stored procedures, etc...)

But I have seen that there is a Perl back end floating about, and there are 
lots of DBI modules for dBase.

So I'm curious if anyone has attempted anything like this before,  and how 
difficult they think this would be.