Hi guys,
I will try to add some clarification about those partitions, because
it's not really something trivial.
First, let's assume we are talking about 1.5 here.
A partition is nothing more than, to take an analogy, a mounting point
on a Unix filesystem. It has a root name (a DN in our case, and the
underlying storage can be whatever we want, byt from now on, a JDBM
based storage (we can perfectly set a partition to use BDB JE, as Kiran
implemented it, or Oracle, or MySql, as some of our users did).
The main difference is that a partition _must_ be associated with an
entry. It's npt different from what you have on OpenLdap anyway.
So let's sum up. You need :
- a name ("dc=example,dc=com", for instance)
- an alias in the configuration file ("example", here)
- an underlying storage ( <jdbmPartition id="example"...)
- and an entry which has to be injected in the server :
dn: dc=example,dc=com
ObjectClass: top
ObjectClass: domain
dc: example
and that's pretty much it.
The problem is that we have change the way those elements are described
in the server.xml file (because this file is changing all along the
versions, until we reach a stable state : 2.0-RC1). So here are some of
the issues we have :
- we don't anymore define the entry within the server.xml file, which is
a bit of a burden for our users
- it's not obvious to understand that <jdbmPartion ... > is associated
with a JDBM backend, not is it obvious what should we use for an Oracle
database
- Not all of our users can clearly understand the server.xml content,
because it's still a moving target (and I really can't blame the poor
guys who try to update the documentation when we lazzy developpers don't
do any effort to keep it stable :/ )
- Mixing xbeans with spring is certainly not helping us...
So we are in trouble here. The question is how could we aleviat our
users pain... We mentioned many times the idea to store configuration in
the DIT. But in order to do that, we have to have a stabilized
configuration, too...
Now, some light at the end of the tunnel : we are almost done with the
big refactoring in the server : ServerEntry, MINA 2, and such, are
pretty much done. There are a few more steps to do in order to get a 2.0
out of the oven, and we have to keep this target in mind now. But we
also have to keep in mind that we have users, and the more closer we
will be to 2.0, the more precise must be the documentation, because it's
not an easy and free task.
I think some items can be discussed, and may be the best would be to
create issues about each parts which is painfull in JIRA (under the DIR
keyword).
wdyt ?
--
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cordialement, regards,
Emmanuel Lécharny
www.iktek.com
directory.apache.org
