How to best handle DN+String and DN+Binary in OL?

[Howard Chu]

Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-07-11 at 14:16 -0700, Howard Chu wrote:
>> Andrew Bartlett wrote:
>>> What is the best way to get OpenLDAP to understand it needs to match on
>>> and follow references to the DN part of these values?
>>
>> Good question. So far the only way to get DN semantics is by using
>> distinguishedName syntax. In a few places we've also special-cased recognition
>> of NameAndOptionalUID syntax, but that's not universal. I suppose, if you can
>> shoehorn your extra blobs into the UID portion, you can use that syntax and we
>> can figure out where else it needs to be accepted.
>
> Looking over the definition of NameAndOptionalUID, shoehorn would
> certainly be the correct expression...  But yes, it looks to me like I
> just need to convert every binary or string element into a bitstring of
> it's bits.

Yeah, bitstrings are a PITA. The better way might be to just define a new 
syntax and matching rules that stores exactly what you want. We can define a 
new syntax flag SLAP_SYNTAX_DN_LIKE or somesuch, and change all of those 
places that were hardcoded to look for DN syntax to use this flag instead.

If as you say, the blob portion is irrelevant for matching, then you would 
just store the normalized DN portion as the attribute's normalized values, and 
most things that work with DNs will Just Work.

-- 
   -- Howard Chu
   CTO, Symas Corp.           http://www.symas.com
   Director, Highland Sun     http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
   Chief Architect, OpenLDAP  http://www.openldap.org/project/