I have developed an LDAP tool using eDirectory...
Articles and Tips: qna
01 Jun 2003
Q.
I have developed an LDAP tool using eDirectory and VB.Net. The tool allows us to model users and change other attributes (add/remove users to groups, create users, etc.) If Novell releases a patch to eDirectory, will it break my application? What we want to know is if my application works with eDirectory v8.6.2 (10320.03), and Novell releases a patch, could it break my code to the point that it could corrupt the directory?
Example: I model a user in eDirectory v8.6.2 (10320.03) using LDAP and it works fine. Novell releases a patch and I model again--what are the possibilities that the schema or something that would affect my application would be updated? Are updates backward compatible? Does it make any difference if I am using LDAP?
I could do an eDirectory version compare to keep this from happening, and test my app on every update to eDirectory but that would be ongoing maintenance that will bog me down in red tape.
A.
Your application needs to be schema-aware; that is, it will discover the schema for any relevant object and handle it accordingly (this depends on the application's behavior). In general, the basic features of objects like users shouldn't change, although new features may be added through schema extensions or auxiliary classes. Your application should be able to handle the latter case, but the guts of objects like users should stay very constant.
The only way your application could corrupt an object is if it actually modified the schema of an object in such a way as to change how other applications use the object. If the schema changed on the object and you were attempting to do something to an old attribute, your script will error out and the change will not occur on the object.
Most (but not all) eDirectory schema changes are backward compatible. Most changes now use auxiliary classes to update existing base classes, and thus the chance of corrupting an object is near zero.
* Originally published in Novell AppNotes
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