X.500 Integration

[Andrew Waugh <[e-mail]>]

Dear all,

I am currently interested how people are integrating X.500 into
applications (or even *if* X.500 is being integrated into applications).

I'm interested in pointers to both applications which have been
constructed and the tools used to do the integration.

Typical applications might be the integration of X.500 into traditional
information systems (payroll, human resources), storage of system
configuration information, and integration into PABX/telephony systems.
I'm interested in flow of information both from the application to X.500
and from the application back to X.500.

Technically, I can see three basic methods to do the integration:

*	Synchronisation to and from X.500 (i.e. off-line data transfer
	and merging of data between an outside system and X.500).

	There are lots of public domain tools and I'd suspect most X.500
	vendors supply bulk loading/unloading facilities of some form.
	There are some third party vendors such as Worldtalk and
	Softswitch. My impression is that the third party vendors are
	mainly interested in email integration.

*	On-line access to X.500 to store or retrieve information (i.e.
	integrating a DAP client into the application).

	There are programming interfaces to X.500 (native i/f such as
	Quipu, portable interfaces such as XDS, and lightweight
	interfaces such as LDAP), but I know of only one 'toolkit'
	specifically designed to simplify integration. I'm also not
	aware of anyone actually using these things to do integration.
	Finally, there is general purpose APIs such as MAPI1.

*	On-line access from X.500 (i.e. getting the DSA to retrieve
	data from outside databases to answer queries).

	The only example I am aware of this is the Worldtalk 'NDS bus'
	system.

andrew waugh