On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 22:04 +0200, Aurelien Bompard wrote:
One thing that was brought up at the last meeting is to find some sort of good ldap guide for programmers. I've been looking for one but have as of yet come up with exactly what I'm looking for. I think it might ease some anxiety we're having about using LDAP.
There is some doc for python here : http://python-ldap.sourceforge.net/docs.shtml
Everything I look at has information on querying but nothing on schema creation and design. I'm beginning to think that LDAP is nothing like SQL :-)
Are these accurate:
Where SQL lets you associate pieces of data as the whim strikes you, LDAP has predetermined what pieces of data are relevant to each other. Your queries in LDAP are selecting these predetermined pieces of data which you then filter or make new queries to get more data.
There is no query language in LDAP. Instead you have a set function interface that let's you interact with the server.
What's the answer to these:
Are there keys in LDAP?
Are there constraints (Entries into this field must be digits. Entries into that field must be dates. Entries into this field must follow this regexp)?
Can you search by regexp? Does this depend on the LDAP server?
If there is no query language in LDAP, then that's probably a big reason why SQL people don't understand LDAP. Even now, I'm trying to wrap my brain around the concept of a database without a query language but my gut just doesn't understand how that could be.
-Toshio