We are planning to use OpenLDAP for user management i.e.: all user information maintained in OpenLDAP, call LDAP services from our Java web application for user authentication, and later on planning to use ACL as well. I am totally new to this OpenLDAP and hence I have the following basic questions open:
In OpenLDAP site it says OpenLDAP software is platform independent and available for all OSes. But, when I start looking at documentation and FAQ (http://www.openldap.org/faq/data/cache/8.html), there is no Windows platform specific documentation, and somewhere I read that OpenLDAP 2.x is only for Unix systems. Now my question is: don't we have a Windows-based OpenLDAP 2.x version software? If yes, where should I download that from?
I found one of the sites mentioning OpenLDAP for windows: http://www.userbooster.com/en/download/openldap-for-windows.aspx. Can I download that and use it for my application? Is it free or proprietary to userbooster, because it is not from OpenLDAP.org
Do you have any documenation or helpful links which talk on how you can call an OpenLDAP server for user authentication from a Java web application? Necessary setup on Java web app and OpenLDAP side?
Can anybody give me some advice?
Answer
(a) See (b).
(b) The terms on which Userbooster provides its port of OpenLDAP for Windows are available at their website. This is the wrong place to ask that question. However I am a very happy user of their port and I can recommend it.
(c) That kind of documentation is all over the place but you could start by reading the Tomcat Realm documentation, if you're using Tomcat, or your container's documentation for Container Managed Security. Also the JAAS package; also have a think and an investigation into what LDAP schemas you want to use. It's a large subject and you have a lot of investigation to do.