LDAP server in Python

[Michael Ströder]

Paul Moore wrote:
 >
> Michael Ströder <michael at stroeder.com> writes:
> 
>>Then I'd recommend to run OpenLDAP 2.1.16 as test server because
>>it's the most strict LDAP server around. You will definitely learn
>>the right things.
> 
> Hmm. I'm not sure "strict" is what I want.

Yes, it is what you want. If you implement a client you should test against 
the strictest reference server implementation. OpenLDAP aims to be a 
reference implementation of LDAPv3.

> The background is that
> Oracle are moving their database naming service from a proprietary
> protocol (Oracle Names) to LDAP. The trouble is that (as is usual with
> Oracle) the documentation is a bit opaque, so I'd rather try it out
> and experiment.

Can you please point me to Oracle's docs?

> My idea was that a Python implementation would be helpful as I could
> follow the implementation if I needed to, to understand what was going
> on.

LDAPv3 server implementations are complex. I'd suspect that a small Python 
implementation would drop most of the protocol complexity leading to wrong 
assumptions on your side.

> When (if) I go live, it
> will be with Oracle Internet Directory, or Active Directory, and I
> won't have much choice.

Then test with these products from the very beginning.

> Oracle Names is basically a fairly trivial name->value mapping,
> whereas LDAP looks far more complex.

I guess the necessary search is quite simple with LDAP too. Provide docs and 
we'll see.

(This whole topic gets a little bit off-topic here. You might wanna 
subscribe to ldap at umich.edu list for general LDAP discussion.)

> I'm not sure if I can justify the
> extra complexity. On the other hand, I may be able to do useful extra
> things with LDAP, such as storing extra data for other clients.

Then you have to understand the whole thing. Go for OpenLDAP, read the Admin 
Guide and set up your own box.

Then grab source distribution of http://python-ldap.sf.net and look into 
Demo/. Feel free to ask specific questions on the python-ldap mailing list.

Ciao, Michael.