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Posted to dev@directory.apache.org by Brett Heroux <br...@gmail.com> on 2010/03/14 06:41:59 UTC
Suggestion to get Groovy LDAP restarted
I have a Groovy API, four static methods on a class for accessing LDAP.
According to your mission, you do not want to abstract LDAP, that the end
result should be similar to the C libraries with a Groovy feel.
I have a couple of observations:
1) Grails is THE Groovy application and any successful Groovy library should
be able to be packaged as a Grails plugin.
2) Closures are nice, but the real power of Groovy is in its collections,
which can be made to look like closures by typing .each
3) So far, Groovy LDAP supports basic authentication, a pluggable
authentication would be nice
4) Groovy LDAP doesn't have a caching mechanism, these are easy to implement
and would also make a nice addition
Finally, I think the mission may be somewhat flawed, JNDI already does this
and the reason there is interest in an alternative is because people, at
least, I, want to have an abstraction from LDAP. Writing JNDI or even Spring
LDAP is tedious, error-prone and time-consuming. A library that doesn't at
least attempt to abstract those three things away is not going to get my
interest.
I am interested in your project, and I tried to be constructive. I do have
some experience with Groovy and LDAP, the yagll (yet another Groovy-LDAP
library) open source project on codehaus.org is mine and I have worked with
Spring LDAP, gldapo, JNDI and absolutely love Apache Directory Studio.
I wish you luck.
Brett Heroux
Re: Suggestion to get Groovy LDAP restarted
Posted by Emmanuel Lecharny <el...@gmail.com>.
On 3/14/10 1:39 PM, Stefan Zoerner wrote:
> Hi Brett!
>
> Thanks for your feedback to Groovy LDAP. Currently, I regard it as a
> proof of concept library. We have added it to the sandbox (and web
> site) in order to see whether there is some interest. And at least you
> are interested (some others already provided as well) :-)
>
> Brett Heroux wrote:
>> I have a couple of observations:
>> 1) Grails is THE Groovy application and any successful Groovy library
>> should be able to be packaged as a Grails plugin.
>
> I must confess that I do not know exactly what a library makes a
> Grails plugin. For me it is important to minimize dependencies, so the
> base library should be independent from Grails. Providing it as a
> Grails plugin in addition as well seems interesting.
>
>> 2) Closures are nice, but the real power of Groovy is in its
>> collections, which can be made to look like closures by typing .each
>> 3) So far, Groovy LDAP supports basic authentication, a pluggable
>> authentication would be nice
>> 4) Groovy LDAP doesn't have a caching mechanism, these are easy to
>> implement and would also make a nice addition
>>
>> Finally, I think the mission may be somewhat flawed, JNDI already
>> does this and the reason there is interest in an alternative is
>> because people, at least, I, want to have an abstraction from LDAP.
>> Writing JNDI or even Spring LDAP is tedious, error-prone and
>> time-consuming. A library that doesn't at least attempt to abstract
>> those three things away is not going to get my interest.
>
> The question is: What is the target group of the library? LDAP people
> like us don't want to hide LDAP functionality with a library like
> JNDI, which uses strange names (bind for adding entries, for instance)
> for common functionality.
>
> For me it would be OK if the library is easy to use for the main 80%
> of the use cases, and allows advanced functionality as well.
>
>> I am interested in your project, and I tried to be constructive. I do
>> have some experience with Groovy and LDAP, the yagll (yet another
>> Groovy-LDAP library) open source project on codehaus.org
>> <http://codehaus.org> is mine and I have worked with Spring LDAP,
>> gldapo, JNDI and absolutely love Apache Directory Studio.
>
> Currently, I do not have much time and Groovy LDAP was a one-man-show;
> therefore the development of the library did not make progress in the
> last months.
>
> But it would be great to work together, design a road map for the next
> features and add them to the next release (which would be the first
> official release anyway). Perhaps also an option for you to enter our
> team ... Are you interested?
I would be very pleased if we can work on the Groovy API at the same
time we are working in the new LDAP API. In fact, I even think that if
correctly defined, we could have a common API for Java, Groovy and C#.
--
Regards,
Cordialement,
Emmanuel Lécharny
www.nextury.com
Re: Suggestion to get Groovy LDAP restarted
Posted by Quanah Gibson-Mount <qu...@zimbra.com>.
--On Sunday, March 14, 2010 11:22 PM +0100 Emmanuel Lecharny
<el...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/14/10 11:09 PM, Quanah Gibson-Mount wrote:
>> --On Sunday, March 14, 2010 1:39 PM +0100 Stefan Zoerner
>> <st...@labeo.de> wrote:
>>
>>> The question is: What is the target group of the library? LDAP people
>>> like us don't want to hide LDAP functionality with a library like JNDI,
>>> which uses strange names (bind for adding entries, for instance) for
>>> common functionality.
>>
>> Also worthy to note that JNDI is in general broken, poorly (if ever)
>> maintained, and the current people working on it at Sun broke it in
>> the 1.6.0_u17 release, and it remains broken in 1.6.0_u18, because
>> they don't understand BER. Thankfully I was able to show them their
>> error, and they are working on a fix, but I don't know which release
>> will have it.
> I would be interested to know what kind of errors you have found in
> 1.6.0_17, if you can provide some more info.
<http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6921610>
--Quanah
--
Quanah Gibson-Mount
Principal Software Engineer
Zimbra, Inc
--------------------
Zimbra :: the leader in open source messaging and collaboration
Re: Suggestion to get Groovy LDAP restarted
Posted by Emmanuel Lecharny <el...@gmail.com>.
On 3/14/10 11:09 PM, Quanah Gibson-Mount wrote:
> --On Sunday, March 14, 2010 1:39 PM +0100 Stefan Zoerner
> <st...@labeo.de> wrote:
>
>> The question is: What is the target group of the library? LDAP people
>> like us don't want to hide LDAP functionality with a library like JNDI,
>> which uses strange names (bind for adding entries, for instance) for
>> common functionality.
>
> Also worthy to note that JNDI is in general broken, poorly (if ever)
> maintained, and the current people working on it at Sun broke it in
> the 1.6.0_u17 release, and it remains broken in 1.6.0_u18, because
> they don't understand BER. Thankfully I was able to show them their
> error, and they are working on a fix, but I don't know which release
> will have it.
I would be interested to know what kind of errors you have found in
1.6.0_17, if you can provide some more info.
Thanks !
--
Regards,
Cordialement,
Emmanuel Lécharny
www.nextury.com
Re: Suggestion to get Groovy LDAP restarted
Posted by Quanah Gibson-Mount <qu...@zimbra.com>.
--On Sunday, March 14, 2010 1:39 PM +0100 Stefan Zoerner <st...@labeo.de>
wrote:
> The question is: What is the target group of the library? LDAP people
> like us don't want to hide LDAP functionality with a library like JNDI,
> which uses strange names (bind for adding entries, for instance) for
> common functionality.
Also worthy to note that JNDI is in general broken, poorly (if ever)
maintained, and the current people working on it at Sun broke it in the
1.6.0_u17 release, and it remains broken in 1.6.0_u18, because they don't
understand BER. Thankfully I was able to show them their error, and they
are working on a fix, but I don't know which release will have it.
Anyone I've worked with who uses Java soon abandons JNDI because of these
and other issues (custom controls, new RFC's, etc etc etc etc etc).
--Quanah
--
Quanah Gibson-Mount
Principal Software Engineer
Zimbra, Inc
--------------------
Zimbra :: the leader in open source messaging and collaboration
Re: Suggestion to get Groovy LDAP restarted
Posted by Stefan Zoerner <st...@labeo.de>.
Hi Brett!
Thanks for your feedback to Groovy LDAP. Currently, I regard it as a
proof of concept library. We have added it to the sandbox (and web site)
in order to see whether there is some interest. And at least you are
interested (some others already provided as well) :-)
Brett Heroux wrote:
> I have a couple of observations:
> 1) Grails is THE Groovy application and any successful Groovy library
> should be able to be packaged as a Grails plugin.
I must confess that I do not know exactly what a library makes a Grails
plugin. For me it is important to minimize dependencies, so the base
library should be independent from Grails. Providing it as a Grails
plugin in addition as well seems interesting.
> 2) Closures are nice, but the real power of Groovy is in its
> collections, which can be made to look like closures by typing .each
> 3) So far, Groovy LDAP supports basic authentication, a pluggable
> authentication would be nice
> 4) Groovy LDAP doesn't have a caching mechanism, these are easy to
> implement and would also make a nice addition
>
> Finally, I think the mission may be somewhat flawed, JNDI already does
> this and the reason there is interest in an alternative is because
> people, at least, I, want to have an abstraction from LDAP. Writing JNDI
> or even Spring LDAP is tedious, error-prone and time-consuming. A
> library that doesn't at least attempt to abstract those three things
> away is not going to get my interest.
The question is: What is the target group of the library? LDAP people
like us don't want to hide LDAP functionality with a library like JNDI,
which uses strange names (bind for adding entries, for instance) for
common functionality.
For me it would be OK if the library is easy to use for the main 80% of
the use cases, and allows advanced functionality as well.
> I am interested in your project, and I tried to be constructive. I do
> have some experience with Groovy and LDAP, the yagll (yet another
> Groovy-LDAP library) open source project on codehaus.org
> <http://codehaus.org> is mine and I have worked with Spring LDAP,
> gldapo, JNDI and absolutely love Apache Directory Studio.
Currently, I do not have much time and Groovy LDAP was a one-man-show;
therefore the development of the library did not make progress in the
last months.
But it would be great to work together, design a road map for the next
features and add them to the next release (which would be the first
official release anyway). Perhaps also an option for you to enter our
team ... Are you interested?
Greetings from Hamburg,
StefanZ
Re: Suggestion to get Groovy LDAP restarted
Posted by Alex Karasulu <ak...@gmail.com>.
On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 7:41 AM, Brett Heroux <br...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a Groovy API, four static methods on a class for accessing LDAP.
>
> According to your mission, you do not want to abstract LDAP, that the end
> result should be similar to the C libraries with a Groovy feel.
>
> I have a couple of observations:
> 1) Grails is THE Groovy application and any successful Groovy library should
> be able to be packaged as a Grails plugin.
> 2) Closures are nice, but the real power of Groovy is in its collections,
> which can be made to look like closures by typing .each
> 3) So far, Groovy LDAP supports basic authentication, a pluggable
> authentication would be nice
> 4) Groovy LDAP doesn't have a caching mechanism, these are easy to implement
> and would also make a nice addition
>
> Finally, I think the mission may be somewhat flawed, JNDI already does this
> and the reason there is interest in an alternative is because people, at
> least, I, want to have an abstraction from LDAP. Writing JNDI or even Spring
> LDAP is tedious, error-prone and time-consuming. A library that doesn't at
> least attempt to abstract those three things away is not going to get my
> interest.
>
> I am interested in your project, and I tried to be constructive. I do have
> some experience with Groovy and LDAP, the yagll (yet another Groovy-LDAP
> library) open source project on codehaus.org is mine and I have worked with
> Spring LDAP, gldapo, JNDI and absolutely love Apache Directory Studio.
>
We appreciate your feedback. Stefan Zorner is the primary person
working on Groovy LDAP and I am sure he will respond to you more on
these suggestions.
It's nice to have more collaborators working on Groovy and LDAP
integration. You're always welcome to come and help us improve Groovy
LDAP so it can be the best it can be for all users.
Best Regards,
--
Alex Karasulu
My Blog :: http://www.jroller.com/akarasulu/
Apache Directory Server :: http://directory.apache.org
Apache MINA :: http://mina.apache.org