[Bodington-developers] LDAP Authentication - OpenLDAP versus JNDI

[Jon M. <jo...@te...>]

Probably one for Alistair...

I'm working on a customised LDAP authenticator for Leeds. 

The standard authenticator uses the OpenLDAP Java API instead of JNDI 
and the Sun LDAP service provider.  I started off also using the 
OpenLDAP API but I've got stuck on a couple of things.

1) I'm trying to set a custom timeout on the connection to the LDAP 
socket. (I want it to be much shorter than the default) However, I can't 
see a mechanism for changing the timeout.  I've worked out how to adjust 
the timeout on searches etc. but not the timeout on socket connections.  
Any ideas?

2) The Sun LDAP service provider has a connection pooling option.  Is 
there anything equivalent in the Open LDAP API?

What was the reason for choosing the OpenLDAP API instead of JNDI?  Is 
there a strong argument against switching to JNDI?

Jon