[Cosmo-dev] Understanding the Cosmo server side target users

[Vinubalaji Gopal]

On Thu, 2006-08-31 at 14:48 -0700, Mimi Yin wrote:

> + Tease out how technologies that support similar usage scenarios  
> differ from each other. e.g. Why would someone use LDAP over  
> CardDAV.  

The CardDAV draft apart from listing other address book alternatives
lists the disadvantages of LDAP:


   The key disadvantages of address book support in LDAP are: 
   1.  Lack of schemas require overly complex client configuration to
       map expected fields in the client to directory entries in the
       server.
   2.  General reluctance to give 'ordinary' users write access to even
       a small portion of the directory as often senstive information is
       included in directory entries and a small mistake in configuring

The second point accentuates the security model of LDAP. CardDAV with WebDAV ACL will provide a
fine grained security - WebDAV ACL is a must for any CardDAV server and Cosmo will eventually 
support WebDAV ACL. 

Personally I have found it hard to configure openldap (the open source implementation of LDAP), but CardDAV  once
part of Cosmo will just work without any kind of special configuration. 

Another key advantage of CardDAV over LDAP is that it uses the standard vCard which is supported by most of the existing 
clients today.