Re: ASN.1/DER compiler

["Kurt D. Zeilenga" <Kurt@OpenLDAP.org>]

At 08:34 AM 11/30/99 +0100, Mikael wrote:
>Allen Reese replied:
>
>> I tried to write something to deal with LDAP requests coming across the
>> wire once, and found it was easier to grab the openldap libs, and hack
>> them to do what I needed.  ;)
>
>Believe me....I truly wish that it could be possible but this cant (?) be done
>because:

Not true.  You can use the LBER (-llber) to do directly decoding and
encoding LDAP messsages.  Or, my recommendation, you can implement
a custom SLAPD backend to allow SLAPD to present your data over
LDAP.

>1. The (already existing) Btrieve database is on another server and is used but
>some other applications so I cant move it to where the LDAP server should be.
>This means that I have to write my own DCOMM where the database is and another
>'LDAPcomm' that listens to incoming LDAP requests, interpret them
>(+authenticates) and then call the functionalities in DCOMM.

A backend can be designed to access data using any mechanism you choose.
People have written backends that use CORBA to communicate with the
datastores.  I am sure one could do the same with DCOMM.

We (and many LDAP vendors) provide a plugin interface specifically to
allow developers to reuse protocol handling codes.  This allows developers
to focus on integration with external data sources.

>2. I cannot copy the databaseinformation to a berkley database (or whatever)
>becourse other applications will update the data (and we do absolutely not want
>two databases with 'update' functionalities between them.

We're not suggesting you do so.  We are suggesting that you implement
a custom backend to expose your existing datastore to the LDAP server.

Kurt