[dev] Horde_Group Refactoring for Horde4

[Ben Klang]

On Jan 29, 2011, at 5:00 PM, Chuck Hagenbuch wrote:

> Quoting Ben Klang <bklang at horde.org>:
> 
>>> I would vote to make groups flat, but if possible, to allow groups to be members of other groups. Not children in a tree, but flat members. That way questions are always based on whether or not the group being originally checked contains the user, or a group that contains the user.
>> 
>> While I can see an argument for allowing groups to be members of groups (primarily: convenience) it does raise a few technical questions:
>> 
>> 1) We would need to add checks to avoid cyclical memberships.
> 
> Yup.
> 
>> 2) Do we continue traversing the group tree indefinitely?  What if Group A is a member of B which is a member of C which is a member of D....
> 
> Well, yes, it should work that way. In terms of implementation concerns, we can pre-calculate that (essentially a materialized view, in database speak).
> 
>> 3) I still want to be able to see at a glance all members of a certain group.  This takes the guesswork out of applying security settings.  I want to be able to look in one place and know for sure to which users this group security setting applies.  We would need to accommodate this in the UI somehow to display "implied" (for lack of a better workd) group members.
> 
> This seems like a policy *you* want to enforce, so you could just avoid nesting groups. I don't think everyone will have this as a requirement.
> 
> -chuck


I have updated the page at 
http://wiki.horde.org/HordeGroupAPI

with results from this discussion and those on IRC.

Any additional feedback is appreciated.

/BAK/