LDAP support (OMLDAP)

LDAP is an acronym for "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol", a client-server protocol to retrieve and manage directory information. The OmniMark LDAP library contains functions that let you create connections to different LDAP data sources and let you display, create, modify, and delete entries in those sources.

You can access any LDAP-compliant server with the LDAP library functions.

You must have the SUN ONE LDAP Directory 5.0 client driver installed. If you do not have this driver, the OMLDAP library will not load. You can get this driver for your platform from the "SUN ONE Directory SDK for C 5" from the SUN download page.

Directory information is organizational information based on entries. An entry is a collection of attributes that have a name. A directory entry could be the following: 

  "cn=Henrik Larsen, ou=sales, o=ABC Industries, c=Norway"

LDAP was first designed as a lightweight interface for PCs to access X.500 directories, but can also be used with any other directory system that follows the X.500 data models.

OMLDAP consists of the following files:

  • "omldap.dll" for Windows
  • "omldap.so" for UNIX
  • "omldap.xmd" -- for all platforms -- the OmniMark module file that contains the opaque data type definitions, the function declarations, and the required predefined variables.

The functions in this library use the following opaque data types:

  • ldap.connection -- used by functions performing actions on the entire LDAP instance.
  • ldap.attribute -- used by functions performing actions on the entry or attribute instance.

Usage note

The OMLDAP library is packaged as a module. To use OMLDAP, you must import the OMLDAP module into your program using a statement like this: 

  import "omldap.xmd" prefixed by ldap.

Note that the prefix "ldap.", which is attached to all functions, constants, and opaque variables exported by this library, is set in this statement and can be changed. For readability, we recommend that you always use the standard prefix when importing modules supplied by OmniMark.

Functions