Re: Contacts databse/postal mailing lists

[John Saylor <jsaylor@mediaone.net>]

Hi

>>>>> "JL" == John Lederer <johnl@ibm.net> writes:

 JL> (1) Is anybody using LDAP this way?

I've piloted something similar- data on LDAP server, queries and
updates via python [gluing cgi to ldap].

It's not in production yet, and I'm still coding it [in my "spare"
time]. The directory server is up and I can query it with pyton
scripts. I just haven't put the web piece in place.

 JL> (2) One of our problems is that we need to produce postal mailing
 JL> lists.
 JL> Comments or thoughts?

I'd make it simpler- each web query produces a page a table of the
results. These results can then be "drilled down" or output to
csv. The csvs can then be saved as text files and fed into the mail
merge templates. This means your users have to know how to save a web
page and how to pull an aribrary file into a mail merge.

 JL> (3) is there an expansive list anywhere of LDAP fields
 JL> (attributes) for a "contact person".

I used a dn like this:
o=Org, c=Country

And then put a contact below:
cn=Contact, o=Org, c=Country

This way, General phone/fax numbers or email address go on the Org
record and information specific to the contact can go on their own
record. I also put a seeAlso going both ways [contact -> org and org
-> contact].

And by modularizing it this way, a new or multiple contacts can be
easily maintained while you don't need to touch the generic
organziational information [except for seeAlso]. And then you have a
description for the account as a whole as well as one for the contact.

-- 
\js

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