Mark, Thanks for your reply, I'm copying the list so others that are interested can see your response.
I'm relatively new to the LDAP game in the past couple years, so I'm curious if someone can help me with some understand something. There is an ietf package in the source. Is that an API that was created by the ietf, or just something that was abstracted by the original Netscape developers? On Wed, 2005-09-14 at 09:27 -0400, Mark Smith wrote: > It is true there has not been a lot of development on the Mozilla Java > LDAP SDK recently, but that that is probably because: > > 1) It is very stable and provides most functionality people need. That's good. I'm glad that it is not that people just aren't interested in LDAP. > 2) The popular Mozilla products (e.g., Thunderbird) do not use Java for > their LDAP features. That's understandable. I'm not familiar with all the history, so I'm curious to know why Netscape developed an LDAP SDK in Java and why Mozilla continued to maintain it. > It is hard to know how widely used the Mozilla Java LDAP SDK is, but I > am fairly sure Sun and RedHat both depend on it for their Directory > Server management GUIs. > > Of course contributions, energy, leadership, etc. are always welcome. That is good to know. I'd like to see open source tool support for LDAP taken to the next level. > Do you have a list of enhancements you'd like to see made? I don't have a formal list at this point, but here are a few. 1) Replace OROMatcher with Jakarta ORO The original OROMatcher that is required to build the SDK is no longer available. However, Jakarta ORO (http://jakarta.apache.org/oro/) is the successor to that and has a completely compatible API. I have gone through and replaced the original OROMatcher and have not come across any problems. I'll go ahead and submit a patch. 2) Clean up bit rot! The whole SDK in general is showing signs of bit rot. Some of the code uses what is now considered bad practices, and with modern IDEs, a lot can be cleaned up. 3) Documentation As someone mentioned, the documentation needs some help. I'd like to see more added, along with examples, like Novell provides with their LDAP classes (http://developer.novell.com/ndk/doc/samplecode/jldap_sample/). 4) Ease of use There are somethings that make using the SDK a pain in the butt. Here's an example of some code that resembles something I've had to write: LDAPEntry entry = results.nextElement(); if(entry != null) { LDAPAttribute attr = entry.getAttribute("cn"); if(attr != null) { String val = attr.getStringValueArray()[0]; } } There's 7 lines of uncommented, as condensed as can be (and still be readable) code, just to get the value of one attribute from an entry. While Novell makes this 1 step easier by providing the LDAPAttribute.getStringValue() method, which returns the first string value, this is still unwieldy. I completely understand why everyone I work with hates programming against LDAP. So, there's just a few things I like to see, and I'm more than willing to make all of them happen. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't investing time in something that was abandoned. > -Mark > > > Brandon Keepers wrote: > > I attempted to contact the Mozilla Directory mailing list, but received > > no response. You are receiving this message either because you were a > > committer to CVS or you are an assignee for a java related bug in > > buzilla. > > > > I am looking for some information about the SDK for Java. There hasn't > > been a lot of activity in the past few years and I was wondering what > > the reason for that is. Are the SDKs considered to be "good enough," > > are there better APIs/SDKs available, or is there not much interest in > > LDAP? > > > > I have taken over the identity management responsibilities at a large > > University and have been using the Mozilla Java SDK. I have an interest > > in working on improving the SDK and improving open source LDAP tool > > support. Thanks, Brandon
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