Re: Fw: How useful is oracle internet directory server?

[Clayton Donley <donley@wwa.com>]

Hi Giovanni,

At its most basic level, a metadirectory basically has three major
components.

1. Connector - Moves data from a particular connected data store to a
central join component. Most vendors support LDAP out of the box and
have various connectors for other types of data stores.

2. Join - Figures out that Joe in one connected data store is the same
as Joe in another connected data store. When changes are made to one
connected data store, the join component uses rules and policies to
determine which other connected data stores should see these changes.

3. View - May be an integrated directory that shows the contents of
metadirectory or may simply be another connected directory.

The idea behind a metadirectory is that legacy applications will not go
away and not all new applications and directories will support common
schema and namespace, even if they do support LDAP. Using a
metadirectory allows you to integrate these various directories without
forcing you to make changes to major infrastructure pieces and
applications that may be beyond your immediate control.

One common example is to have HR as a connected directory responsible
for people objects. A connector interfacing with PeopleSoft would read
changes and forward them to the join component. The join would then read
its configuration and make a determation as to what other directories
need that person information.

The benefit here is that you can do a one-to-one mapping between
attributes in PeopleSoft and attributes in the metadirectory and not
have to worry about the relation between a PeopleSoft field and various
attributes in each directory. This is much easier to manage than
point-to-point synchronization once you get beyond one or two connected
directories.

So basically the answer to your question is that yes, a metadirectory
should be able to update a user table in Oracle if it is properly
configured.

Clayton



Giovanni Baruzzi wrote:
> 
> We had to maintain a Table of user entries in an Oracle DB; other applications make use of this information.
> Can a Metadirectory also update a table? I had the impression that Metadirectory are mailny read-only.