RE: [higgins-dev] Re: Getting started with IdAS?

["Paul Trevithick" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Marc wrote:
> 
> All,
> 
> Thanks again for the push in the right direction.  I think I'm
> starting to understand IdAS and Higgins.  I still have a few questions
> though based on observations:
> 
> 1.  IdAS - It appears to me (I may be stating the obvious here) that
> the IdAS is not so much a service in the sence that OpenLDAP/MySQL/...
> are services but instead its a collection of interfaces and a registry
> for interacting with backend sources that must be utilized by a higher
> level "service" to be useful.  Is this correct?

Yes. In an analogy to JDBC think of IdAS as managing a bunch of different
kinds of database drivers (context providers). A little different in
emphasis from JDBC is that IdAS expects the "drivers" to also map the
underlying data model (which might be relational, a directory, or anything
else) into the common Higgins data model. The upper components of Higgins
(especially the I-Card Managers) are an example of a higher level service
that consumes IdAS.

> 
> 2.  Configuration - Each CP is responsible for it's own configuration.
>  The only thing in "common" between context providers is that each one
> is passed a URI in order to point to a config.  I have read the Novell
> config schema and see that it it hard coded to work with either LDAP
> or XML based resources.  I also saw that it is likely to change.  Is
> there a "common configuration" subproject in the works or some type of
> "best practices" for configuration design?  If every CP has it's own
> config model I would think deployment of a complex IdAS based system
> could be interesting.

We're in the middle of a redesign of how all of that works. The current
scheme was put together as an interim solution. Where we're headed is that
the ContextId is truly a "name" and it is mapped by registries into what
provider to use, where its configuration data is, etc.