Re: LDAP vs SQL

[Mark Wilcox <mewilcox@unt.edu>]

Hi,
It's becoming easier to integrate LDAP into our daily lives (I really think 1999 will be year of the LDAP :).
Sun offers  Sun Directory Serivces and there is also Luke Howard's ypldap . Both of these allow you to drop in
replacement to use LDAP as the backend tech for NIS. Solaris 2.6 and Solaris 7 (which will be new name of
Solaris 2.7 to released next week) also support PAM authentication and LINUX does too. PAM authentication allows
you to implement whatever authentication scheme you wish while presenting a common API so you don't have to
rewrite all of your apps from scratch if they use the OS for authentication. I believe Luke has written a PAM
module for LDAP as well.

There are also a number of opensource projects under way to use LDAP for RADIUS and there is also at least one
FTP server that uses LDAP for authentication.

LDAP integration won't happen overnight. In the mean time you can use LDAP as a "meta-directory". This means
that you use LDAP to be the central store for your user information (or well) where you draw your information
from as you begin to integrate.

Mark


Stuart Schmukler wrote:

> Tracy said:
> > I'm looking into implementing something like LDAP for my company to help
> > us manage our user accounts and various other sorts of info. I've read the
> > 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)
> > directly support LDAP in any way.
>
> Is you want to give 'users' accounts on your system LDAP has to be integrated into the logon program.
>
> Its easier to see how LDAP could be used if the customers or vendors shouldn't have account but you want
> to control access to some resource.   For example private web pages, or PPP lines (for an ISP) come to mind.
>
> SaS