Data Joining Solutions
As Identity Data becomes increasingly fragmented and is spread across
repositories, it becomes more and more difficult to access a single view
of an identity that provides a completely consolidated account of all
user attributes. While it is possible to unify branches from various
different repositories within a single view, or virtual tree, each
branch may still contain data that comprises a single identity.
Extracting attributes from an entry within one branch and joining them
to the attributes for an entry in a completely separate branch, or even
repository, seems to be an insurmountable but entirely worthwhile
challenge.
The Join Entries plugin that is bundled with
Symlabs' LDAP Proxy and
Symlabs' Virtual Directory Server
requires minimal configuration to extract the attributes from an entry
within a branch of an LDAP tree in one repository and join them to the
attributes presented for an entry in an entirely different branch, even
if this branch is located in a separate repository.
By specifying 'join attributes' you can use common identifiers within
separate repositories to perform SQL-style joins, incorporating data
from as many sources as you require and presenting it all as if it was a
single record entry. For conflicting attributes, you can configure
which attributes might be aggregated as well as a general "order of
preference" to help specify how authoritative a data source should be
considered.
Th Join Entries plugin can be configured to handle both Read and Write
operations separately, allowing you to control for which operations the
complex transformation and routing operations take place.
For each foreign data group being included in the join, it is possible
to specify different Read and Write operations, including controlling
which attributes are included. Furthermore, it is possible to include
static values for specified attributes, which may prove useful to show
which other data sources contain data about an identity when a joined
result is returned.
This powerful bundled plugin automatically resolves a number of common
problems related to data fragmentation and distribution and performs
data transformation on-the-fly so that you don't need to concern
yourself with data replication or synchronization.