using james with custom user database (mysql)

[Christian Andersson <ca...@ofs.no>]

Hi there, I'm currently looking at ways to integrate james into one of 
our projects, this project already has users in the database (mysql).
I now want to integrate james in this setup so that the mail-accounts in 
james will correspond to the users in my userdatabase..

ie user "ca" in my database will have a mail-account "ca" and they will 
both have the same password...

I have identified several ways to do this, all with different usability 
and "niceness" to it..

1 - complete manually, ie when someone adds an user on our database, the 
user must be added in james also, this requires lot of extra work, and 
lots of problems which is not desired...

2 - replicate our users from our database into the james-user database, 
this requires our program to actively support 2 user-databases, and 
every change in our system should be transfered to the james-database.

3 - have james look into our user-database for accounts and 
authentication, this requires that I change the james source, and keep 
up to date with new releases, and change it's source...

Or perheps #3 can be easier then that, if james does have a pluggable 
authentication system so that i can write my class that authenticates 
according to our database... and also gets user info from our database..

however I see problems with both #2 and #3  (#1 has been dissregarded)

Is there a prefered way to do this?
any recomendations?

I'm not sure if this will be done against the 2.1.x releases or the 3.0 
release yet, if that helps...

/Christian Andersson


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: james-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: james-user-help@jakarta.apache.org

RE: using james with custom user database (mysql)

["Noel J. Bergman" <no...@devtech.com>]

> unfourtunally this is mysql, and mysql does not support views as of yet

The good news is that all of the SQL statements are in sqlResources.xml.  So
if you can implement the schema mapping in a single SQL statement per
operation, you should be OK.

	--- Noel


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: james-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: james-user-help@jakarta.apache.org

Re: using james with custom user database (mysql)

[Christian Andersson <ca...@ofs.no>]

Noel J. Bergman wrote:
> No it doesn't.  Look at conf/sqlResources.xml.  You ought to be able to add
> a custom set of entries for your schema.  Alternatively, if you using a
> database that supports views, you might use a view to map the two views of
> the data.

unfourtunally this is mysql, and mysql does not support views as of yet 
(I think they have scheduled it to V5.0 or something like that)

I'll have to take a look into the sqlResources.xml file and see wha tI 
find...

> For James v3, we are contemplating the idea of using JNDI.  How would that
> fit with your plans?

currently we do not use jndi for anything in our application but we are 
considering starting to use ldap for user-integration with other 
systems. So at the moment we have not started to study jndi/ldap other 
that we know that they exist and have a somethat idea on what they can 
be used for...

I'm not sure however how "soon" we will start usign this, or when we 
will start looking ito it futher..

At the moment we have managed to create everything we need, because when 
we started this project, what exist today did not yet exist.... and we 
cannot transfer our code to new ideas/api:s as fast as we might like to 
since it might break to much for our existing customers...

One of our customers have however asked us about setting up a 
mail-server for them, that they can use togeather with the product they 
already have from us... and since we like java, opensource (we might 
even transform our project some time in the future to opensource) linux, 
mysql, etc.. we started to look around and found james...

(well found is a bit understatememnt, we already knew of james, since we 
use apache and are probably moving towards tomcat or something like that)

Well, that is my story anyway....



---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: james-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: james-user-help@jakarta.apache.org

RE: using james with custom user database (mysql)

["Noel J. Bergman" <no...@devtech.com>]

> I now want to integrate james in this setup so that the mail-accounts in
> james will correspond to the users in my userdatabase..

> 3 - have james look into our user-database for accounts and
> authentication, this requires that I change the james source,

No it doesn't.  Look at conf/sqlResources.xml.  You ought to be able to add
a custom set of entries for your schema.  Alternatively, if you using a
database that supports views, you might use a view to map the two views of
the data.

For James v3, we are contemplating the idea of using JNDI.  How would that
fit with your plans?

	--- Noel


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: james-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: james-user-help@jakarta.apache.org