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slapd-sql(5)





NAME

       slapd-sql - SQL backend to slapd


SYNOPSIS

       /etc/openldap/slapd.conf


DESCRIPTION

       The  primary purpose of this slapd(8) backend is to PRESENT information
       stored in some RDBMS as an LDAP subtree without any  programming  (some
       SQL and maybe stored procedures can't be considered programming, anyway
       ;).

       That is, for example, when you (some ISP) have account information  you
       use  in  an  RDBMS,  and  want to use modern solutions that expect such
       information in LDAP (to authenticate users, make email  lookups  etc.).
       Or  you want to synchronize or distribute information between different
       sites/applications that use RDBMSes and/or LDAP.  Or whatever else...

       It is NOT designed as a general-purpose backend that uses RDBMS instead
       of BerkeleyDB (as the standard BDB backend does), though it can be used
       as  such  with  several  limitations.   You  can   take   a   look   at
       http://www.openldap.org/faq/index.cgi?file=378     (OpenLDAP     FAQ-O-
       Matic/General LDAP FAQ/Directories vs. conventional databases) to  find
       out more on this point.

       The  idea  (detailed below) is to use some metainformation to translate
       LDAP queries to SQL queries, leaving relational  schema  untouched,  so
       that  old applications can continue using it without any modifications.
       This allows SQL and LDAP applications to inter-operate without replica-
       tion, and exchange data as needed.

       The  SQL  backend is designed to be tunable to virtually any relational
       schema without having to change source  (through  that  metainformation
       mentioned).   Also,  it  uses ODBC to connect to RDBMSes, and is highly
       configurable for SQL dialects RDBMSes may use, so it may  be  used  for
       integration  and distribution of data on different RDBMSes, OSes, hosts
       etc., in other words, in highly heterogeneous environment.

       This backend is experimental.


CONFIGURATION

       These slapd.conf options apply to the SQL backend database.   That  is,
       they  must  follow a "database sql" line and come before any subsequent
       "backend" or "database" lines.  Other database options are described in
       the slapd.conf(5) manual page.

       dbname <datasource name>
              The name of the ODBC datasource to use.

       dbhost <hostname>
       dbuser <username>
       dbpasswd <password>
              These  three options are generally unneeded, because this infor-
              mation is already taken from the datasource.  Use  them  if  you
              need  to  override  datasource  settings.   Also, several RDBMS'
              drivers tend to require explicit passing of user/password,  even
              if  those  are  given  in  datasource (Note: dbhost is currently
              ignored).

       subtree_cond <SQL expression>
              Specifies a where-clause template used to form a subtree  search
              condition  (dn=".*<dn>").  It may differ from one SQL dialect to
              another (see samples).

       children_cond <SQL expression>
              Specifies a where-clause template used to form a children search
              condition (dn=".+,<dn>").  It may differ from one SQL dialect to
              another (see samples).

       oc_query <SQL expression>
              The default is SELECT id,  name,  keytbl,  keycol,  create_proc,
              delete_proc, expect_return FROM ldap_oc_mappings

       at_query <SQL expression>
              The  default  is  SELECT  name, sel_expr, from_tbls, join_where,
              add_proc,   delete_proc,   param_order,    expect_return    FROM
              ldap_attr_mappings WHERE oc_map_id=?

       insentry_query <SQL expression>
              The  default is INSERT INTO ldap_entries (dn, oc_map_id, parent,
              keyval) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?)

       delentry_query <SQL expression>
              The default is DELETE FROM ldap_entries WHERE id=?

              These four options  specify  SQL  query  templates  for  loading
              schema  mapping  metainformation, adding and deleting entries to
              ldap_entries, etc.  All these and subtree_cond should  have  the
              given  default  values.  For the current value it is recommended
              to look at the sources, or in the log output when  slapd  starts
              with  "-d  5"  or  greater.   Note that the parameter number and
              order must not be changed.

       upper_func <SQL function name>
              Specifies the name of a function that converts a given value  to
              uppercase.  This is used for CIS matching when the RDBMS is case
              sensitive.

       upper_needs_cast { yes | no }
              Set this directive to yes if upper_func needs an  explicit  cast
              when  applied  to literal strings.  The form CAST (<arg> AS VAR-
              CHAR(<max DN  length>))  is  used,  where  <max  DN  length>  is
              builtin.    This  is  experimental  and  may  change  in  future
              releases.

       concat_pattern <pattern>
              This statement defines the pattern to  be  used  to  concatenate
              strings.  The pattern MUST contain two question marks, '?', that
              will be replaced by the two strings that must  be  concatenated.
              The  default  value  is  CONCAT(?,?); a form that is known to be
              highly portable (IBM db2, PostgreSQL) is ?||?, but  an  explicit
              cast   may  be  required  when  operating  on  literal  strings:
              CAST(?||? AS VARCHAR(<length>)).   On  some  RDBMSes  (IBM  db2,
              MSSQL) the form ?+?  is known to work.  Carefully check the doc-
              umentation of your RDBMS or stay with the examples for supported
              ones.  This is experimental and may change in future releases.

       strcast_func <SQL function name>
              Specifies  the name of a function that converts a given value to
              a string for appropriate ordering.  This is used in "SELECT DIS-
              TINCT"   statements  for  strongly  typed  RDBMSes  with  little
              implicit casting (like PostgreSQL), when  a  literal  string  is
              specified.   This  is  experimental  and  may  change  in future
              releases.

       has_ldapinfo_dn_ru { yes | no }
              Explicitly inform the backend whether the SQL schema  has  dn_ru
              column  (dn in reverse uppercased form) or not.  Overrides auto-
              matic check (required by PostgreSQL/unixODBC).  This is  experi-
              mental and may change in future releases.

       fail_if_no_mapping { yes | no }
              When  set to yes it forces attribute write operations to fail if
              no appropriate mapping between LDAP attributes and SQL  data  is
              available.  The default behavior is to ignore those changes that
              cannot be mapped correctly.  It has  no  impact  on  objectClass
              mapping, i.e. if the structuralObjectClass of an entry cannot be
              mapped to SQL by looking up its name in ldap_oc_mappings, an add
              operation will fail regardless of the fail_if_no_mapping switch;
              see section "METAINFORMATION USED" for details.  This is experi-
              mental and may change in future releases.


METAINFORMATION USED

       Almost everything mentioned later is illustrated in examples located in
       the  servers/slapd/back-sql/rdbms_depend/  directory  in  the  OpenLDAP
       source  tree,  and  contains scripts for generating sample database for
       Oracle, MS SQL Server, mySQL and more  (including  PostgreSQL  and  IBM
       db2).

       The  first  thing  that  one  must  arrange  is what set of LDAP object
       classes can present your RDBMS information.

       The easiest way is to create an objectClass for each entity you had  in
       ER-diagram  when  designing  your  relational  schema.   Any relational
       schema, no matter how normalized it is, was designed after  some  model
       of  your application's domain (for instance, accounts, services etc. in
       ISP), and is used in terms of its entities, not just tables of  normal-
       ized  schema.  It means that for every attribute of every such instance
       there is an effective SQL query that loads its values.

       Also you might want your object classes to conform to some of the stan-
       dard schemas like inetOrgPerson etc.

       Nevertheless,  when you think it out, we must define a way to translate
       LDAP operation requests to (a series of) SQL queries.  Let us deal with
       the SEARCH operation.

       Example:  Let's suppose that we store information about persons working
       in our organization in two tables:

         PERSONS              PHONES
         ----------           -------------
         id integer           id integer
         first_name varchar   pers_id integer references persons(id)
         last_name varchar    phone
         middle_name varchar
         ...

       (PHONES contains telephone numbers associated with persons).  A  person
       can  have  several  numbers,  then PHONES contains several records with
       corresponding pers_id, or no numbers (and no  records  in  PHONES  with
       such  pers_id).   An LDAP objectclass to present such information could
       look like this:

         person
         -------
         MUST cn
         MAY telephoneNumber $ firstName $ lastName
         ...

       To fetch all values for cn attribute given person ID, we construct  the
       query:

         SELECT CONCAT(persons.first_name,' ',persons.last_name)
             AS cn FROM persons WHERE persons.id=?

       for telephoneNumber we can use:

         SELECT phones.phone AS telephoneNumber FROM persons,phones
          WHERE persons.id=phones.pers_id AND persons.id=?

       If  we wanted to service LDAP requests with filters like (telephoneNum-
       ber=123*), we would construct something like:

         SELECT ... FROM persons,phones
          WHERE persons.id=phones.pers_id
            AND persons.id=?
            AND phones.phone like '123%'

       So, if we had information about what tables  contain  values  for  each
       attribute,  how to join these tables and arrange these values, we could
       try to automatically generate such  statements,  and  translate  search
       filters to SQL WHERE clauses.

       To  store  such information, we add three more tables to our schema and
       fill it with data (see samples):

         ldap_oc_mappings (some columns are not listed for clarity)
         ---------------
         id=1
         name="person"
         keytbl="persons"
         keycol="id"

       This table defines a mapping between objectclass (its name held in  the
       "name"  column), and a table that holds the primary key for correspond-
       ing entities.  For instance, in our example, the person  entity,  which
       we are trying to present as "person" objectclass, resides in two tables
       (persons and phones), and is identified by the persons.id column  (that
       we  will call the primary key for this entity).  Keytbl and keycol thus
       contain "persons" (name of the table), and "id" (name of the column).

         ldap_attr_mappings (some columns are not listed for clarity)
         -----------
         id=1
         oc_map_id=1
         name="cn"
         sel_expr="CONCAT(persons.first_name,' ',persons.last_name)"
         from_tbls="persons"
         join_where=NULL
         ************
         id=<n>
         oc_map_id=1
         name="telephoneNumber"
         sel_expr="phones.phone"
         from_tbls="persons,phones"
         join_where="phones.pers_id=persons.id"

       This table defines mappings between LDAP  attributes  and  SQL  queries
       that  load  their values.  Note that, unlike LDAP schema, these are not
       attribute types - the attribute "cn" for "person" objectclass can  have
       its values in different tables than "cn" for some other objectclass, so
       attribute mappings depend on  objectclass  mappings  (unlike  attribute
       types  in  LDAP schema, which are indifferent to objectclasses).  Thus,
       we have oc_map_id column with link to oc_mappings table.

       Now we cut the SQL query that loads values for a given attribute into 3
       parts.  First goes into sel_expr column - this is the expression we had
       between SELECT and FROM keywords, which defines WHAT to load.  Next  is
       table  list  -  text  between  FROM and WHERE keywords.  It may contain
       aliases for convenience (see examples).  The last is part of the  where
       clause, which (if it exists at all) expresses the condition for joining
       the table containing values with the table containing the  primary  key
       (foreign  key  equality  and such).  If values are in the same table as
       the primary key, then this column is left NULL  (as  for  cn  attribute
       above).

       Having  this  information  in  parts, we are able to not only construct
       queries that load attribute values by id of entry (for  this  we  could
       store SQL query as a whole), but to construct queries that load id's of
       objects that correspond to a given search filter (or at least  part  of
       it).  See below for examples.

         ldap_entries
         ------------
         id=1
         dn=<dn you choose>
         oc_map_id=...
         parent=<parent record id>
         keyval=<value of primary key>

       This  table  defines mappings between DNs of entries in your LDAP tree,
       and values of primary keys for corresponding relational data.   It  has
       recursive structure (parent column references id column of the same ta-
       ble), which allows you to add any tree structure(s) to your flat  rela-
       tional  data.  Having id of objectclass mapping, we can determine table
       and column for primary key, and keyval stores value of it, thus  defin-
       ing the exact tuple corresponding to the LDAP entry with this DN.

       Note  that such design (see exact SQL table creation query) implies one
       important constraint - the key must be an integer.  But all that I know
       about well-designed schemas makes me think that it's not very narrow ;)
       If anyone needs support for different types for keys - he may  want  to
       write a patch, and submit it to OpenLDAP ITS, then I'll include it.

       Also, several people complained that they don't really need very struc-
       tured trees, and they don't want to update one more  table  every  time
       they  add or delete an instance in the relational schema.  Those people
       can use a view instead of a real table for ldap_entries, something like
       this (by Robin Elfrink):

         CREATE VIEW ldap_entries (id, dn, oc_map_id, parent, keyval)
             AS SELECT (1000000000+userid),
         UPPER(CONCAT(CONCAT('cn=',gecos),',o=MyCompany,c=NL')),
         1, 0, userid FROM unixusers UNION
                 SELECT (2000000000+groupnummer),
         UPPER(CONCAT(CONCAT('cn=',groupnaam),',o=MyCompany,c=NL')),
         2, 0, groupnummer FROM groups;


Typical SQL backend operation

       Having  metainformation  loaded,  the  SQL backend uses these tables to
       determine a set of primary keys  of  candidates  (depending  on  search
       scope  and  filter).  It tries to do it for each objectclass registered
       in ldap_objclasses.

       Example: for our query with filter (telephoneNumber=123*) we would  get
       the following query generated (which loads candidate IDs)

         SELECT ldap_entries.id,persons.id, 'person' AS objectClass,
                ldap_entries.dn AS dn
           FROM ldap_entries,persons,phones
          WHERE persons.id=ldap_entries.keyval
            AND ldap_entries.objclass=?
            AND ldap_entries.parent=?
            AND phones.pers_id=persons.id
            AND (phones.phone LIKE '123%')

       (for  ONELEVEL  search) or "... AND dn=?" (for BASE search) or "... AND
       dn LIKE '%?'" (for SUBTREE)

       Then, for each candidate, we load the requested attributes  using  per-
       attribute queries like

         SELECT phones.phone AS telephoneNumber
           FROM persons,phones
          WHERE persons.id=? AND phones.pers_id=persons.id

       Then,  we use test_filter() from the frontend API to test the entry for
       a full LDAP search filter match (since we cannot effectively make sense
       of SYNTAX of corresponding LDAP schema attribute, we translate the fil-
       ter into the most relaxed SQL condition to filter candidates), and send
       it to the user.

       ADD,  DELETE,  MODIFY  and MODRDN operations are also performed on per-
       attribute metainformation (add_proc etc.).  In  those  fields  one  can
       specify  an  SQL  statement  or stored procedure call which can add, or
       delete given values of a given attribute, using the given entry  keyval
       (see  examples  --  mostly  ORACLE and MSSQL - since there're no stored
       procs in mySQL).

       We just add more columns  to  oc_mappings  and  attr_mappings,  holding
       statements  to execute (like create_proc, add_proc, del_proc etc.), and
       flags governing the order of parameters  passed  to  those  statements.
       Please  see  samples  to  find  out what are the parameters passed, and
       other information on this matter - they are self-explanatory for  those
       familiar with concept expressed above.


Common techniques (referrals, multiclassing etc.)

       First  of all, let's remember that among other major differences to the
       complete LDAP data model, the concept above does not  directly  support
       such things as multiple objectclasses per entry, and referrals.  Fortu-
       nately, they are easy to adopt in this scheme.  The  SQL  backend  sug-
       gests  two  more  tables being added to the schema - ldap_entry_object-
       classes(entry_id,oc_name), and ldap_referrals(entry_id,url).

       The first contains any number of objectclass names  that  corresponding
       entries  will  be  found  by, in addition to that mentioned in mapping.
       The SQL backend automatically adds attribute mapping for  the  "object-
       class"  attribute  to  each  objectclass mapping that loads values from
       this table.  So, you may, for instance, have a mapping for  inetOrgPer-
       son, and use it for queries for "person" objectclass...

       The  second  table  contains  any number of referrals associated with a
       given entry.  The SQL backend automatically adds attribute mapping  for
       "ref" attribute to each objectclass mapping that loads values from this
       table.  So, if you add objectclass "referral" to this entry,  and  make
       one  or more tuples in ldap_referrals for this entry (they will be seen
       as values of "ref" attribute), you will have slapd return  a  referral,
       as described in the Administrators Guide.


Caveats

       As  previously stated, this backend should not be considered a replace-
       ment of other data storage backends, but rather a gateway  to  existing
       RDBMS storages that need to be published in LDAP form.

       The  hasSubordintes  operational  attribute  is  honored by back-sql in
       search results and in compare operations; it is partially honored  also
       in filtering.  Owing to design limitations, a (braindead) filter of the
       form (!(hasSubordinates=TRUE)) will give no results instead of  return-
       ing  all  the  leaf entries.  If you need to find all the leaf entries,
       please use (hasSubordinates=FALSE) instead.


EXAMPLES

       There are  example  SQL  modules  in  the  slapd/back-sql/rdbms_depend/
       directory in the OpenLDAP source tree.


FILES

       /etc/openldap/slapd.conf
              default slapd configuration file


SEE ALSO

       slapd.conf(5), slapd(8).

OpenLDAP 2.2.30                   2005/11/18                      SLAPD-SQL(5)

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