Re: Announce: Net-LDAPapi version 2.00 released

[Howard Chu <hyc@symas.com>]

Quanah Gibson-Mount wrote:
> A new release of Net::LDAPapi module is now available for Perl via CPAN. 
> This release includes compilation against OpenLDAP libraries from 
> version 2.1 forward.  It now supports LDAPv3, including SASL binds.

Great, glad to see this finally making it back out to the world.

> Support for the Netscape (now Mozilla) C SDK has been kept, but not 
> tested. I welcome feedback on the usability with the Mozilla C SDK.
>
> Many thanks to Howard Chu and Symas Corporation for the work done to 
> realize LDAPv3 support with Net::LDAPapi.
>
> Net::LDAPapi can be obtained from:
>
> <http://search.cpan.org/~mishikal/Net-LDAPapi-2.00/>
>
>
> For those who have never used Net::LDAPapi, it uses the C interface for 
> its LDAP operations.  This means that it is much faster than the pure 
> perl Net::LDAP module from the perl-ldap package.  However, it also 
> relies on having the C libraries it was linked against available.

We've observed a 100:1 speed difference between Net::LDAPapi and Net::LDAP. 
Usually people writing perl scripts don't seem to take performance or 
efficiency into account, because they're just coding up a "quickie tool." But 
it then evolves into something else, and eventually gets deployed into 
production. We've seen this happen over and over with perl-based web login 
scripts, where gradually the web server gets bogged down under its 
authentication load. Switching from Net::LDAP to Net::LDAPapi has helped a 
number of our customers get their systems back up on their feet.

--
  -- Howard Chu
  Chief Architect, Symas Corp.  http://www.symas.com
  Director, Highland Sun        http://highlandsun.com/hyc
  Chief Architect, OpenLDAP     http://www.openldap.org/project/