Re: LDAP Back-end database access

["Dmitry Kovalev" <mitya@seismic.geol.msu.ru>]

Hello!

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kalyanaraman Subramaniyan" <ksubra@onebox.com>
To: <openldap-software@OpenLDAP.org>
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2001 5:15 PM
Subject: LDAP Back-end database access


> Hi All,
>
> I am a new kid in the LDAP block.
>
> I am trying to use LDAP for user authentication. At present we have our
>
> authentication information for external and internal Person in Oracle
> DB. Even after implemeting LDAP for authentication, we will be getting
>
> the Person data created in Oracle Db.
>
> So, I assume, there should be a way of syncronzing or transporting the
> data from Oracle to LDAP.
>
> Initially, I can create an LDIF file from the Oracle DB and load into
> the LDAP database ldbm. I would like to know how i can handle the
subsequent
> updates/Adds/Deletes in the Oracle Db synced to LDAP.
>
> Also is there is any way to use Oracle Db as a backend db (existing data
> attribites) instead of keeping the directory data in the LDAP ldbm.
>

With OpenLDAP, you can use alternative backend to OpenLDAP slapd - back-sql.
It is designed especially for such cases, and allows you to present and
manage your existing RDBMS data through LDAP, since having no need to
synchronize anything.
You will have to do some amount of SQL authoring, and performance will
depend largely on conformance on "likelyhood" of your RDBMS schema with LDAP
schema you need for authorization.
Back-sql is available as part of OpenLDAP 2.x distribution.
See this and other lists archives for more information, and mail if you
still have any questions about it.

Also, you may consider Oracle's LDAP extension - it is also based on RDBMS,
of course, but I'm not shure if it is tunable to existing RDBMS schema - it
is more likely that it dictates it's own...

WBW, Dmitry