RE: LDAP vs SQL

["Luke Howard" <lukeh@xedoc.com.au>]

> faqs and various web pages but there are still a few things I don't
> understand. As far as I know, none of our OS's (Linux, HP-UX, SCO)

Linux can directly support LDAP with the nss_ldap module. I believe HP are
working on native libc support for LDAP in HP-UX. I don't know about SCO,
although they are interested.

> server and rebuilds files (password, shadow, tcb, group,
> aliases, hosts,

That's one option. We wrote some Java classes for doing this some time ago.
I know of at least one organization doing this with Perl scripts.

> dns, etc) based on the info it retrieves? If this is the case, there
> doesn't seem to be much advantage to using LDAP over a regular SQL
> database. Generating the whole password file sounds kinda
> risky anyhow.

The advantages of using LDAP over SQL here are long-term, as vendors move
towards LDAP as a single source of account and administrative information.
Another option is an LDAP/NIS gateway, such as ypldapd, SunDS, or SGI's nsd.


-- Luke