[imp] Moving everything to LDAP and integrating with client software

[Ryan Gallagher]

Quoting Syahrul Sazli Shaharir <sazli@myjaring.net>:

> On Wed, 9 Oct 2002, Syahrul Sazli Shaharir wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 9 Oct 2002, Harry Hoffman wrote:
> >
> > > client programs (ie-> Outlook, Netscape, Simeon, etc.).  My initial
> > > inclination is to move personal address books to LDAP like our global
> > > address book. Is anyone else doing this?
> >
> > I maintain one site with Horde+IMP&Turba preferences & global address book
> > in LDAP.
> 
> Sorry for waste of bw - I misread the question: answer is no, I haven't
> stored personal address books in LDAP, though I've seen the possibility in
> HEAD, which either stores address books in a dedicated ou subtree or as a
> prefs item.

Very noble idea however you may find _other_ software's support for customizing
which objects/attributes they pay attention to in an LDAP datasource to be very
frustrating.  Most use some sort of standard contacts schema (or one they
customized) but don't allow for user definable fields/queries etc etc.

For example, OpenOffice uses the Mozilla/Netscape LDAP schema (non-editable)
when pulling from an LDAP datasource.  Why mozilla's scheme? Because that's
where they borrowed a big chunk of code from and nobody has written the
customization stuff yet.

We too want to have LDAP be the predominant datasource at our office (because of
it's flexibility), and hence are pushing the use of the web-based tools (horde
etc) over the other clients.  

Just some words of encouragement/warning.  By all means please post any progress
you make on this endeavor in an appropriate group!  Personally i'd love to see
an LDAP driver for every module with maybe the exception of IMP and Kronolith.

-- 
Ryan T. Gallagher
ryan@studiesabroad.com
International Studies Abroad
http://www.studiesabroad.com
(512)480-8522