LDAP : Embedded Objects

With JDO it is possible to persist field as embedded. This may be useful for LDAP datastores where often many attributes are stored within one entry however logically they describe different objects.

Let's assume we have the following entry in our directory:

dn: cn=Bugs Bunny,ou=Employees,dc=example,dc=com
objectClass: top
objectClass: person
objectClass: organizationalPerson
objectClass: inetOrgPerson
cn: Bugs Bunny
givenName: Bugs
sn: Bunny
postalCode: 3578
l: Hollywood
street: Sunset Boulevard
uid: bbunny
userPassword: secret

This entry contains multiple type of information: a person, its address and its account data. So we will create the following Java classes:

public class Employee {
    String firstName;
    String lastName;
    String fullName;
    Address address;
    Account account;
}

public class Address {
    int zip;
    String city
    String street;
}

public class Account {
    String id;
    String password;
}

The JDO metadata to map these objects to one LDAP entry would look like this:

<jdo>
    <package name="com.example">
        <class name="Person" table="ou=Employees,dc=example,dc=com" schema="top,person,organizationalPerson,inetOrgPerson">
            <field name="fullName" primary-key="true" column="cn" />
            <field name="firstName" column="givenName" />
            <field name="lastName" column="sn" />
            <field name="account">
                <embedded null-indicator-column="uid">
                    <field name="id" column="uid" />
                    <field name="password" column="userPassword" />
                </embedded>
            </field>
            <field name="address">
                <embedded null-indicator-column="l">
                    <field name="zip" column="postalCode" />
                    <field name="city" column="l" />
                    <field name="street" column="street" />
                </embedded>
            </field>
        </class>
        <class name="Account" embedded-only="true">
            <field name="uid" />
            <field name="password" />
        </class>
        <class name="Address" embedded-only="true">
            <field name="zip" />
            <field name="city" />
            <field name="street" />
        </class>
    </package>
</jdo>