Page Comparison

Here are my notes from some internal design work on PD2.0, the primary goals are:

• Simplify configuration, this will likely involved a custom Spring namespace handler to provide a more complete XML configuration language.
• Improve lookup speed, adding in an ExecutorService to allow for parallel lookup of attributes from various sources.
• Simplify the API, provide a try criteria API for complex searches in addition to the ability to lookup attributes for a single user.

Secondary goals:

• Add JMX monitoring of performance of each attribute source.

QUESTIONS

1. are attribute names case insensitive? YES according to PD1.5 behavior

api - public interface

• need to think/design the query builder API, something fluent would be good
  
  • http://static.springsource.org/spring-ldap/site/apidocs/org/springframework/ldap/filter/package-frame.html
• do we need an Attribute class or are Attributes just Strings?

Complex queries and multiple attribute sources

• default root query object ORs its parts together?
• break root query object up by OR clause?
• maxResults?
• the problem:
  
  • Given a query like (firstName=Jane && (isStudent=Y || lastName=Doe))
  • How do we handle sources that do not support all of the attributes in the query?
    
    • do a multi pass query, query sources that support all attributes first
    • query sources that support a subset of the attributes second, during merge filter these in code using the attributes that were not passed to the source
    • query non-searchable sources

General Query Logic

• attribute query
  
  • ex: by username, [foo=bar, name=smith, ....]
  • Run MS & PS sources
    
    • turn map into OR() criteria for MS
  • Run S sources once per existing result
• criteria query
  • ex: (firstName=jane && (lastName==smith || lastName=doe))
  • Run MS sources
    
    • merge results
  • Run PS sources
    
    • merge results
  • Run S sources once per existing result

attribute source classes - how do we tell/config the difference?

• fully searchable (MS) - CriteriaSearchAttributeSource
  
  • uses a query template (supports arbitrary logic)
  • ldap or primary use directories go here
• partial searchable (PS) - SimpleSearchAttributeSource
  
  • uses named placeholders but still can return multiple people for one query
  • small associated sources go here
• single-person only (S)
  • will only ever return a single result ... is this useful?
  • in=memory sources like for shib go here

spi - what code in support implements to provide data

core - big ugly guts

• core code that does
  
  • dependency tree calc of sources
  • determine query order and potential for parallelism, probably better to figure it with always parallel and having "block" spots that wait for other sources to complete
  • caching of results from each source
  • handling of query timeouts
  • merging results from various sources
  • mapping attribute names from the API side to the SPI side
    • TODO move this into a transformation API
  • jmx metrics for per-source usage & performance
  • primaryId
    
    • Used when a find person by primary id query is run
    • Used to merge data from multiple sources (each result must have a primaryId set)
• add a list of AttributeSourceFilter
  
  • these are called in order (sorted by ordered)
  • if any filter returns false the filtered source is not executed
  • filterchain style API that allows for modification of search?
• dependency tree calculation on configured attribute sources
  
  • needs to fail to init if something is wrong with the tree
  • this probably needs to be calculated and cached for each query since the tree will look different every time based on the input
• caching of results - part of XML config support
  
  • for each configured source, set cache name or reference to Ehcache bean
  • optional cache name/ref for misses
  • optional cache name/ref for exceptions
• query timeout - part of XML config support
  
  • set maximum wait for query result
  • set behavior on timeout? (ignore, fail)
• merge behavior
  
  • if two sources return different attribute values for the same attribute ignore the second and log an error
• attribute name mapping - part of XML config support
  
  • for each configured source, option to allow for saying api attr "username" is actually "uid" in this spi
  • which direction does this mapping work?
• attribute lists
  
  • in the config are these the PD side or the source side of the attr mapping?
  • at least one required or optional search attribute must be specified
  • required search
    
    • ALL of these attributes must be include in a query for this source to be able to run the query 
  • optional search
    
    • This plus the required set make up the collection of attributes that can be used to search, attributes outside this set are ignored
  • available return 
    
    • The list of attributes the source returns, this is a best-effort set and the source may return more attributes than are named in the set

support

• attribute sources
  
  • jdbc (MS,MP,S)
    
    • single row
    • multi row
  • ldap (MS,MP,S)
  • xml (MS)
  • request attribute (S)
• filters
  
  • regex
  • spel