Implementation of a SQL Engine for LDAP

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Implementation of a SQL Engine for LDAP

• Shiv Shankar Ramakrishnan,
• Ranjeet Sonone,
• Shyam Gopale
• LDAP-RDBMS integration product group, PSPL

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An example of where LDAP fits
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Sample LDAP usage

• White Pages
• "I want to look up so-and-so and get their email
  address and phone number..."
• Yellow Pages
• "List me all the printers.."
• Attribute Mapping
• "Give me the company ID number of the person
  whose login ID is..."
• "Give me the email routing address of this
  person...
• Directory-enabled networking
• Give me the traffic policy for this department
  
• Give me the preferences last used by this client
  

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About LDAP

• DN, RDN, hierarchy
• object class, attribute
• base, one level, subtree operations

• search, insert, update, delete, modrdn, moddn
• multi-valued attributes

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Database/LDAP integration
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Example of a table mapping
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PS EnList relational view of LDAP data

• The tree below an entry is viewed as a table,
  entries as records/tuples.
• A table definition determines the entries
  returned and the attributes which are searched.
• base DN,
• object classes,
• scope,
• column-attribute mapping,
• PK selection,
• datatypes

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PS EnList SQL engine requirements

• Standards-based interfaces
• Multi-valued attributes
• Exploit the server functionality
• Almost as fast as LDAP
• Product extensibility
• data source consolidation
• PERL operator

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Consider a sample query

• Give unique, ordered telephone numbers for all
  groups with at least one MTS from Engineering
  as a member of the group.
• Multivalued attributes, operators - filters,
  join, distinct

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SQL for the sample query

• Select distinct Grp.Tel, Ppl.dn
• from Grp, G_members, Ppl
• where
• Ppl.title MTS and
• Ppl.dept engineering and
• G_member.dn Grp.dn and
• G_member.member Ppl.dn
• order by Ppl.dn

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Using the PERL operator for parent of

• Find telephone numbers of departments with
  Joshi in them.
• Select Dept.Tel, Dept.Name
• from Dept, Ppl
• where
• Ppl.surname Joshi and
• Dept.dn STRIPRDN(Ppl.dn)

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LDAP related operators

• LDAP scan
  
• scan on the view table
• Special LDAP related optimization
• Filter and sort could be combined with ldap scan
• ldap directory could be treated as index and
  could do index join

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Future challenges

• A structured approach to splitting the query
• between the LDAP server and PS EnList
• Caching of query results
• Consolidation of schema across servers
• High-value operators and SQL extensions
• Recognizing LDAP usage and placing optimizations
  according to usage