[thelist] age old question: how to deal with addressbook export

[Zhang Weiwu]

在 2006-04-02日的 22:02 +1000，Ken Schaefer写道：
> : -----Original Message-----
> : From: 张|武 [mailto:zhangweiwu at realss.com]
> : Sent: Sunday, 2 April 2006 2:01 AM
> : To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> : Subject: Re: [thelist] age old question: how to deal with addressbook
> : export
> : 
> : 在 2006-03-21二的 20:02 +1100，Ken Schaefer写道：
> : > : -----Original Message-----
> : > : From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org [mailto:thelist-
> : > : bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of ???
> : > : Subject: [thelist] age old question: how to deal with addressbook export
> : > :
> : > : Hello. Recently I was working on an company directory project 
> : > : where the backend uses LDAP to store  contact (and other information) 
> : > : of several thousands of companies. The project is done in php.
> : > :
> : > : Now the requirement is to export the contact data. I think of CSV. 
> : > : But I am not sure how I will handle language information and/or 
> : > : multiple values of LDAP, e.g. the company have 3 addresses and 
> : > : each of them have 3 languages. Perhaps I should export to some 
> : > : spreadsheet format so that I can use different tabs for different 
> : > : languages.
> : >
> : > Why don't you export to LDIF? Most LDAP tools will work with that.
> : 
> : yes you are 100% correct, and I am not that stupid to ignore LDIF. It is
> : too easy to get an LDIF export but our customer work with absolutely no
> : LDAP tools. Actually, they don't know what LDAP is and they will not
> : accept LDIF file nor accept using Lotus Notes/Thunderbird connected to
> : LDAP server, this is what I already tried. But any other suggestions?
> 
> Well, since there is a client limitation here, perhaps you could tell us what
> they will accept?

Everything MS Excel can open, that's my fault forgetting mensioning
this. I think CSV is the simplies for me. I am also aware Excel can open
some XML files but I am not sure about what structure of XML is okay.

> Additionally, where are they going to store this information? If they are
> going to put it into another LDAP directory, then I would push them to use
> LDIF. There are plenty of tools that will work with LDIF built into most
> platforms, so I’d be amazed if they are using an OS that doesn’t have such
> a tool.

The information is always stored in LDAP server and export is used to
let them share this information to other people who wish to see the
contact without web, without any bit of learning and conceptioning but
just want see the info by double click a file. It is also used to print
labels.

There is another difficulty: the multi-language version of same contact
is a very important feature in my application, this feature is by RFC
supported by LDAP server but so far I never found any customer-level
LDAP tool that display the extra language versions (including evolution,
thundbird/mozilla, openoffice addressbook component, MS outlook). The
lack of customer access tool makes LDAP only a storage tool for my app,
like RDBMS, not avaible directly to the customer. Of course,
professional LDAP client (phpmyldapadmin, ldap browser....) see these
diffierent language versions.

> 
> If they are planning to put it into a RDBMS, then perhaps exporting to a
> format (like CSV) that is more amenable to being imported into a DB might
> make more sense...

Never. I hope they know what is RDBMS....