Summary

A new whitepages system would make whitepages information available on up-to-date LDAP servers, would retrieve data from Oracle instead of Ingres (which the current system uses), and would allow for realtime updates of whitepages data. (Note that the new whitepages system would not necessarily include affiliation data, and therefore would not necessarily replace the current directory.)

Status

This project is in the inital proposal stage. Information contain here will change often as vested parties express there views.

Goals

We want to make it easier to manage a user's whitepages entry. This can be difficult since a user may want something obscure that we had never thought of. Generally we want to do the following.

1. Let user specify the feedentry to use to build their whitepages entry.
2. Let the user overide specific data entries in their whitepages entry.
3. Let the user specify multiple feedentries to build their whitepages entry
   Additional multivalued attributes may include:
   • titles/departments
   • phone numbers
   • addresses

Project Software Components

• Persontransfer

  The person transfer program copies feeds from Ingres into Oracle. This program must be update to copy additional fields required by the whitepages.

• Whitepages Writer

  A new program that will need to be developed to translate the oracle data to LDIF format. Comparable to l2ph but simplified. The program must use an API to interface with Oracle and OpenLDAP. It must also allow for batch reloads and real time updates.

• OpenLDAP 2.2.x with SASL/Kerb support

  OpenLDAP will need to be built with SASL/Kerb support to allow for authenticated lookups and ACLs. The 2.3 branch lets you index (via slapd) substrings < 3 characters. This should improve searches for 'bo*' etc

• Uniedit extendion

  To make it easy for staff to edit a whitepages entry, an extension should be added to uniedit to allow for the editing of an entry

Project Design Components

• Handle's Feed Ranking and Selection Rules

  Rules for ranking feeds and selecting correct data should be as simple as possible. Additionally, to deal with user complaints, the system should eaily allow for user selection of which feeds to incorporate in their entry.

• Columbia Whitepages Schema

  An OpenLDAP schema needs to be defined to contain the data from Oracle. Exsiting schema should be used as frequently as possible.