managing OpenLDAP / back-config

[Ralf Haferkamp <rhafer@suse.de>]

With the great features that back-config provides to configure OpenLDAP 
servers at runtime it seems logical to start thinking about providing tools 
that could help to leverage those features.

Currently to manage an OpenLDAP server through back-config you have the option 
to use either a generic LDAP Browser (JXplorer, Apache LDAP Studio, 
web2ldap), the OpenLDAP command line tools (ldapsearch, ldapmodify, ...) or  
homegrown software using one of the available LDAP APIs. I think it would be 
helpful to have some more sophisticated management tools (Commandline and/or 
GUI).

In order to get there I think it could be helpful to create an API dedicated 
to provide an easy way to access the OpenLDAP configuration (databases, 
overlays, schema, access control, ...). This API could then be used to create 
different flavors of management tools.

I have not yet spend too much time thinking about the design of such an API. 
Neither about the programming language that I'd use to implement something 
like this (Python, C, C++, ?). I first like to get a feeling how others think 
about this and if anybody is interested in collaborating on such an API. So 
please feel free to reply with your comments and suggestions :)

-- 
regards,
	Ralf