Re: db/schemas best practice

[Jerry Haltom <wasabi@larvalstage.net>]

I would use a relational database for this. LDAP doesn't seem
appropiate.

On Tue, 2003-05-13 at 08:19, Michael Engelhart wrote:
> Hello -
> 
> In the FAQ-omatic, there's a post regarding having multiple databases 
> with the following quote:
> "SLAPD can be configured to support multiple databases and each 
> database can support multiple suffixes.  The multiple databases each 
> with a single suffix approach is preferred over the single database 
> with multiple suffix approach. "
> 
> I am developing something which stores contact data for multiple 
> 'clients' (i.e., discrete businesses).
> 
> My theory based on the FAQ response is to partition off each client,  I 
> could create a separate bdb backend config in slapd.conf and each time 
> a client is added, add this and restart the server.  Is this a 
> reasonable approach?
> There is the headache of manually editing slapd.conf each time a client 
> is created but besides that is there any thing "wrong" with handling it 
> this way.
> 
> My 2 questions assuming this is  OK are:
> 
> 1) How many backends can slapd deal with before needing to move to a 
> new process or server (none of these clients will have more than 
> probably 10,000 entries).
> 
> 2) Some of the clients have custom attributes they want to have in 
> there like for example and auto dealer may want to have a vehicleMake, 
> vehicleModel and vehicleYear attributes so they can have that 
> information associated with their customers entry.   What I have 
> currently is a schema that is shared by these backends and this seems 
> to work fine.  But if/when a new client comes on and I need to add an 
> attribute, does this "break" existing clients data?  The existing 
> clients wouldn't be accessing or using these new attributes.   Or do I 
> have to dump and restore every backend when I make a change like that.  
>   Would a better approach be to have a schema for each client that needs 
> new entries.   The schema attributes are "generally" industry related 
> so if I have 10 auto dealers, they'll all basically have the same 
> requirements so they can be shared to some extent.
> 
> 
> Any advice is appreciated.
> 
> Michael
> 
>