need organizational hint

[Etienne Goyer]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 08:59:12PM -0500, Phil Howard wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 10:53:21AM -0400, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> 
> | >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.

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

For your Web frontend, PHP and Perl both have very good LDAP support. 

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.

-- 
Etienne Goyer                    Linux Québec Technologies Inc.
http://www.LinuxQuebec.com       etienne.goyer at linuxquebec.com
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