Re: [Phpgroupware-developers] Addbook vs addressbook

[Brian Johnson]

Sounds great to me

Who's in charge?

What can I do to help?

I'm not a programmer but I often can work my way through enough logic to modify
existing code.  I don't know anything about LDAP.  I am pretty good with SQL.

After using addbook for a while now, I have some recommended changes from the
addbook table layout



Ralf Becker (address@hidden) wrote:
>
>Brian Johnson schrieb:
>> I understand that one potential complication of separating the companies 
>> from the
>> individuals in the table format is that it makes the addressbook app harder 
>> to work
>> with those using LDAP
>>
>> I understand that the current LDAP design in addressbook is made to match a 
>> LDAP
>> standard for the storage of contact information
>>
>> In my thinking, we have three options:
>> 1. stick with what is done (in which case I'll continue work on addbook)
>> 2. try to get a new LDAP contact standard adopted and wait until that's done 
>> (see
>> next paragraph)
>> 3. create a system that utilizes a different database structure than the LDAP
>> structure and have the code adjust for the different formats
>>
>> I think 2. would be a huge delay - trying to get 100s or 1000s of people to 
>> agree
>> on a new format.  Also, in my limited understanding of LDAP, it is not a 
>> relational
>> structure and it might be impossible to separate the companies from the 
>> people and
>> maintain a relationship between the data (which would of course prevent the
>> adoption of a LDAP contact standard format to do this)
>
>I have the same Opinion on that.
>
>The only accepted schema for now is the inetOrgPerson and only that is
>visible in stock LDAP clients like e.g. the mozilla addressbook.
>inetOrgPerson is basicly the data of a Person including *one* address,
>phone, fax, mobile, private phone, email, url and a companyname.
>
>What I already suggested is in line with your next proposition:
>I propose to use in LDAP:
>- a schema based on the inetOrgPerson (that means all that fields plus
>some own)
>- two inetOrgPerson record/node for each person in an organisation:
>1) with its private data linked to the other one by its cn (common
>name), uid (user-id) or an other id outside the inetOrgPerson schema.
>2) with its org-data linked to it's organisation by the organisations
>name. That record dublicates/mirrors the company address, and the
>persons names (readonly from stock LDAP clients). It's only genuine data
>is phone, fax, mobile, email, url.
>- the cn of the privat address should include a '(privat)', so u see the
>difference between the two in a stock LDAP client
>- we use an other inetOrgPerson (or other schema) record/node for the
>organisation itself, includeing its address, central phone, fax.
>- the linking of this 3 is done by unique org- and person-id's. These
>id's are either readonly or outside the inetOrgPerson schema (in an own
>schema, which includes / is based on the inetOrgPerson schema). I would
>prefer the last, as this would allow read/write access for other clients.
>
>Why would we need up to 2 inetOrgPerson for one person?
>- else your are not able to select private AND buisness mail, phone,
>fax, address in a stock client
>
>The phpgw GUI / addressbook (and the (new) api-contacts-class) will mix
>these speparate nodes and display them in a way addbook does it today:
>1) org's containing several persons
>2) persons contained in zero or one org
>3) the contacts-id (which is needed from the api contacts class, is
>either the org-id or the person-id, which both together have to be unique.
>
>The database/table-structure could be the one of addbook, maybe with
>some modifications: inetOrgPerson has some more fields we dont use at
>the moment, which might be interesting to have eg. secretary and manager
>
>Like brian said: what do you think about that proposition?
>
>Ralf
>
>> I suggest we proceed with the concept of modifying the addressbook database
>> structure to better normalize the data including separating the companies 
>> and the
>> people into separate tables.
>>
>> So what do you guys think?  Can we start talking about a new database 
>> structure for
>> the addressbook and the corresponding changes to the web forms?
>>
>>
>> Dr. Michael Meskes (address@hidden) wrote:
>>
>>>On Mon, Mar 03, 2003 at 09:00:27PM +0000, Brian Johnson wrote:
>>>
>>>>>field-structur like the addressbook has it know and only change the UI
>>>>>to keep the org-fields in sync with the org-fields of the other persons
>>>>>in that org. That is not the cleanest approach (Michael Meskes would say
>>>>>the db is not normalized) but it is far better than the other ideas
>>>>
>>>Hey, and what shall I say now? :-)
>>>
>>>Fact is you have several advantages by normalizing the data. But you
>>>can, of course, reimplement the logic inside the GUI. If it was only for
>>>the database I wouldn't do that, but I do not have enough ldap knowledge
>>>to say if we could get this going with normalized data.
>>>
>>>
>>>>time entries for testing purposes but I need to create better filtering and
>>>>searching abilities in addbook before other switch to it (and I add our 
>>>>3000+-
>>>
>>>I agree completely.
>>>
>>>Michael
>>>
>>>P.S.: Also CCed to Carsten who takes care of our phpgw installation,
>>>although he's on vacation right now.
>>>Email: address@hidden
>>>
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>Phpgroupware-developers mailing list
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>>>http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/phpgroupware-developers
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
>--
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Ralf Becker
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--
Brian Johnson

This is where my witty signature line would be if I bothered to edit this line 
:)