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LDAP-Based Address Books for Win32?
Snafoo asks: "I'm trying to replace an Access-powered communal address book at my office with something cross-platform and (preferably) LDAP-powered. Unfortunately, I can't find a single email client for windows that would allow people to update the LDAP dB from their address-book interface except, the usual suspect, Outlook. I've tried Mozilla, Eudora, and a slew of other 'freebies', but they only allow browsing; at the moment, I'm considering dropping cygwin+XFree on the desktops of the windows clients and giving them access to Evolution on a central server (God bless Ximian!), however, most of the Win32 boxen are used by non-clueful sorts who would be put out by the inconvenience of what amounts to a second desktop. Aside from shelling out $90 a seat for WinAxe, or another rootless X server for Windows, what do you all recommend?" Those interested in X-Servers for Windows may wish to check out this
previous article, however if you are using an X11 server not mentioned, please feel free to recommend others, here.
Couldn't you simply run Evo or whatever client in the X server WITHOUT running a window manager or desktop environment? Just pass it some window geometry and let it take up the entire X server display?
I certainly agree. I am currently in a couple of projects now that have people across the country, across different platforms (Mac and Win2k mainly, but I use Linux at home often) and we want to be able to share a contact list for our media contacts. Right now there's no good way of doing it aside from a text listing we have on our website, which sucks in comparison to an LDAP server we could have running somewhere. This would reduce the confusion we have when we're updating the contacts list and not everyone has the contacts in their personal Outlook/Netscape/Lotus Notes/whatever contact lists.
Any resources on this? I checked google to only small avail (though my query might have sucked).
--onyx--
It looks like it does, yes. For sure you can query LDAP directories, but I'm less sure of being able to make changes to them.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
SquirrelMail is a web-based IMAP client. Among its many features are . . . LDAP address book (RW).
You could use this for adding addresses and using your IMAP server remotely, and use any other IMAP client(s) for all other purposes.
-Peter
I really like seeing a question asked when it's something that I'm in the process of figuring out for myself at that exact moment! ;)
Rolodap looks very promising. I'm probably going to put it up this weekend if I get time.
It's only software!
What's "non-clueful" about people who don't want to run a second desktop environment on top of the one they already have? What's wrong with wanting copy-and-paste that works well and being able to sync your addressbook to an offline laptop and a PDA?
I'm assuming your current system's worst problem (if there's even a problem at all) is that this Access-based system isn't integrated with your e-mail clients. It sure is nice to be able to access and select entries from your addressbook straight into the "To:" and "Cc:" fields of the message composition interface. I'll bet that's what will make users happiest. Maybe you should make user productivity and user happiness your primary goal, and not pick a backend technology first. If users are happy with the current system (and they probably aren't), is it a speed issue you could address by migrating the data to a better database and keeping the Access frontend, or is it an interface and data model issue that points to the complete overhaul you have in mind?
That said, LDAP's a good, flexible, extensible way to store multiuser, multi-departmental addressbooks. Go for it. But unless you're a complete jerk, you'll only use it if you can provide the users with interfaces that are at least as convenient (from their standpoint, not yours) as what they have now, and are preferably better. I don't think ugly XWindow applications (and X itself) glopped onto their Windows desktops are the answer.
You can get a good interface between addressbook and e-mail with Outlook. Heck, you can get that with the web interface to Exchange or Notes. What mail system are you using? Generic IMAP? Fine.
Granted, even with the best antivirus protection pushed out to every machine and aggressive scanning on the servers and WSH disabled in Outlook, you still may not be able to sleep nights knowing Outlook's out there. Maybe you can deploy a nice LDAP-maintenance tool or two for people to edit the addressbooks with (a simple web one and a complex, advanced Java one for power users) along with a mail client that can access the same LDAP store read-only.