Hello,

We have a PerlDAP based application (PerLDAP 1.4 compiled against Mozilla C
SDK 4.x) that is able to write ISO-8859-1 Characterset encoded entries into
our iPlanet Directory Server 4.16 solution with no problems.  After being
written to the directory the entry can be queried and the resulting data set
will return all the data in the same format as it was added. This includes
characters such as the "ä" (small a, umlaut) and the "õ" (small o, tilde)
characters.

We are migrating to IBM Directory Server 5.2.  When running the same
application against IBM Directory Server, entries can be successfully added
EXCEPT when attributes such as sn, cn, & givenname (among others) the
contain the following characters:
ÁÂÃÄÅÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÈÒÓÔÕÖØÙÚÛÜÝàáâãäåçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõöøùúûüýÿ.

IBM Directory Server returns an "Operations Error" to the client.  We have
been told that IBM Directory Server 5.2, being a modern directory server
unlike iPlanet Directory Server 4.16, only accepts UTF8 encoded data via
LDAP and that while iPlanet Directory Server 4.16 allowed non-UTF8 encoded
data to be added, modern directory servers expect that the LDAP client
convert any data from the local codepage to UTF8 before the client adds data
to the directory server.

Is this true?  Are the ways iPlanet Directory Server 4.16 and IBM Directory
Server 5.2 handle data-encoding that different?

One other suggestion offered to us is to recompile PerLDAP against the
latest Mozilla, Netscape, or SunOne C SDKs instead of Mozilla C SDK 4.  The
thought it the older Mozilla C SDK 4 didn't default to UTF8 when performing
add operations against the directory, and that the latest C SDKs will.  In
this scenario, the PerLDAP based application continues to run with
modification (at a Perl level) but the new C SDK will behind the scenes
solve the communications errors we are having with IBM Directory Server
because it defaults to UTF8.

We know there is some truth to what IBM is telling us because all of our
Java based directory applications have no issues with either iPlanet
Directory Server 4.16 or IBM Directory 5.2 when adding those special
characters.  We've been told that is because Java uses Unicode (ie UTF8) as
a default for JNDI and Mozilla Java SDK operations.    In fact, our only
time our IBM Directory Server 5.2 isn't accepting the special characters is
when PerLDAP is used to add the data.  All of our other LDAP APIs are
working just fine.

Throwing away our PerLDAP applications is not an option for us right now due
to tight timelines (we can't even move to Net::LDAP) so I am wondering if
someone else has solved this problem.  Of course we have considered
performing UTF8 conversions (using a perl UTF8 module) on all the attribute
strings before we write the entry within PerLDAP, but due to the number of
applications involved and the tight timelines, we'd prefer something more
simple like updating the C SDK to something newer if that works.

Any ideas, advice, comments on our dilemma would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Amit Kothari
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


_______________________________________________
mozilla-directory mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/mozilla-directory

Reply via email to