need organizational hint

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>>|>5.No LDAP or other network based user directory.  The user
>>|>  directory should be something simple and basic, like a DB file.
>>|>  But it will need to include the data for the user's rules,
>>|>  even if in a separate DB.
>>| So your going to basically recreate a broken version of LDAP?
>>I won't be creating that which I don't want.  What I do want is
>>directly access data within minimal overhead not only for the
>>mail system to access, but also for other programs I am doing
>>to access and manage.  The email is only a part of it.  I have
>>looked at LDAP, but it adds too much complication.
>LDAP does exactly what you want : make information accessible by
>different system (or subsystem) with minimal overhead.

Agree.

>You could try to coax all the system into using the same relational 
>atabase, table and columns for the information required, but I believe 
>this will end up being more headache than learning and using LDAP.  

And the overhead of an RDBMS is *CERTAINLY* greater than that of LDAP.

If you just use DB files how do you handle concurrency, replication, backup,
etc...  it is *REALLY* hard.

>Maybe you are put off by the LDAP lingo and loathe the learning curve, 
>but I can tell you it's worth the effort to learn it.  It make a lot of 
>sense when you understand it and can help solve a lot of information 
>consolidation problem.  It is also becoming quite ubiquitous with the 
>advent of AD and the rise in popularity of OpenLDAP in the Linux world.

Agree.

>The overhead is, as far as my experience goes, pretty minimal and could be
>considered insignificant if the LDAP server is running on the same
>machine as the service accessing it.
>Just my humble opinion.

There is another really good argument against coding your own solution to
everything - support.  Who is going to support/maintain your solution if you
quit, retire, get fired, change careers, or die?  One of the previous will
happen eventually.  I've personally seen companies switch from UNIX or Open
Source to M$ because someone built a wonderful and elegant system; and then left
with all the knowledge of how to maintain, manage and extend it.  Companies are
flocking to standards like LDAP for good reason.