Re: Package Pool Proposal
On Tue, Nov 23, 1999 at 06:08:41PM +0000, Jules Bean wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Nov 1999, Ben Collins wrote:
>
> With that proviso in mind, my gut feel is that this 'shape' of problem is
> one well solved by relational databases...
>
While traditional databases might be superior in their "benchmarks" and
significant indexing and other data specifics. LDAP is geared better for
this type situation for several reasons:
1) It is easily accesible via the network. IOW, it's widely distributable
and is aimed at being replicable (something we need for our application).
IMO, this is the biggest reason.
2) It is simple. The filtering is easy to grok, even for beginners. This
way, no one has to be a SQL (or other) expert in order to use it.
3) It's very light weight. The perl module that supplies scripting as a
client is only about 75k installed (nothing else is needed besides perl).
4) It allows us to merge other things. For example, our maintainer db is
already LDAP based, and is used for, among other things, our system
accounts for each developer, and PGP keys. Our BTS could eventually be
merged with it, and have the bugs become child entries for the packages
they pertain to, and even make the bugs version/arch specific for the package.
5) Expandable. We don't have to rewrite the entire schema and table layout
if we want to change things. LDAP directories are very open and even allow
multiple values for a single field (the row/column structure does not
apply). It allows inheritable objectClasses.
6) Access control. Access to the directory can be controlled down to a
single field per user. Users can even own entries (perhaps package/source
entries could eventually be owned by their maintainers, and use PGP for
auth) and access given to them based on that ownership to make changes
that other developers can't.
--
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/ Ben Collins -- ...on that fantastic voyage... -- Debian GNU/Linux \
` bcollins@debian.org - collinbm@djj.state.va.us - bmc@visi.net '
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