Regarding building an authentication layer for Imail, is anyone in this forum in a position to build a modification of the ODBCUSER.DLL to authenticate to LDAP?
I would like a production version available by August if possible. -ives ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sanford Whiteman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Ives Stoddard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 7:50 PM Subject: Re[4]: [IMail Forum] 7.1 > Ives, > > > I've considered this and may end up going this route, but it's not a > > long-term solution since the product direction may easily change and the > > solution rebuilt. > > I doubt that Ipswitch would dare make drastic changes to ODBCUSER.DLL > requirements, since there are thousands of people using customized > versions, but it's true that you're unlikely to get them to sign a > contract. > > > Don't get me wrong, I certainly appreciate the advice either in recent > > postings or throughout the entire archive. You are a large contibutor to > > this forum and I think everyone here values your contributions. > > Thanks, and welcome to active duty on the Forum yourself! > > > I was more hoping to convey that this should be a specific > > development target for Ipswitch. Not just an off-shoot possibility > > by modifying DLL's intended for ODBC calls. Working at a systems > > integration company has taught me that writing the internals of the > > application to support ODBC will yield tweaks geared specifically > > towards ODBC usage and performance. > > While I'd agree with you in theory, there's nothing particularly > tweaked about Imail's native ODBCUSER.DLL: it exports necessary > functions, then uses E-SQL to execute queries; it could just as easily > bind to an LDAP library, with no loss in performance. > > The lack of publicity for IMail's pluggable authentication mechanism > is probably due the opacity of C/C++ to the average sysadmin, and in > turn no one has stepped up to make the necessary modifications. > Another prohibitive factor is the "ODBC" in the filename; it has been > a complaint of mine for some time that the shipping ODBCUSER.DLL > doesn't use OLE DB, which (a) is significantly faster for connectivity > to standard SQL back ends, if providers are available, (b) would > easily allow for the use of MS' OLE DB connectivity to AD (which is, > however, read-only) without a separate LDAP port, (c) is the state of > the art on Win32, and (d) with ADO, is implicitly store-agnostic, > meaning that, while ANSI SQL is still the most common query language, > the ADO framework could very easily be used to query other data stores > with their own application semantics. > > Another thing to keep in mind is that SQL, a set-centric query > language, is not at its best when performing the singleton SELECTs > that are its major duty under IMail. Simpler, indexed hierarchical > data stores like the Imail Registry, the NT SAM, and LDAP are always > going to be better for such functions. But the SQL handicap is only > present as long as you leave it in your ODBCUSER.DLL code. > > I think everything's there already to build what you're describing, > it's just obfuscated by the "ODBC" moniker. Ipswitch could spend just > a little time making cosmetic changes and some third-party products > might pop up right away. > > -Sandy > > > Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html > to be removed from this list. > > An Archive of this list is available at: > http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ > > Please visit the Knowledge Base for answers to frequently asked > questions: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ > Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html to be removed from this list. An Archive of this list is available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Please visit the Knowledge Base for answers to frequently asked questions: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
