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Installing the Oracle Internet Directory C API

by Jeff Hunter, Sr. Database Administrator

Contents

1. About the OID C API
2. Building Applications with the OID C API

About the OID C API

The Oracle Internet Directory SDK C API is based on:

• LDAP Version 3 C API
• Oracle extensions to support SSL

You can use the Oracle Internet Directory API release 3.0.1 in the following modes:

• SSL-All communication secured using SSL
• Non-SSL-Client-to-server communication not secure

The API uses TCP/IP to connect to an LDAP server. When it does this, it uses, by default, an unencrypted channel. To use the SSL mode, you must use the Oracle SSL call interface. You determine which mode you are using by the presence or absence of the SSL calls in the API usage. You can easily switch between SSL and non-SSL modes.

Building Applications with the OID C API

Required Header Files and Libraries

To build applications with the C API, you need:

• The header file is located at $ORACLE_HOME/ldap/public/ldap.h.
• The library is located at $ORACLE_HOME/lib/libldapclnt8.a.

Solaris Users: Installing gcc

For Solaris users, you will need to download and install gcc. The compiler can be downloaded from http://www.sunfreeware.com. After downloading the software application gcc, you will need to use pkgadd (logged in as the root userid) as follows:

# su -
# pkgadd -d gcc-3.2-sol8-sparc-local

After installing gcc, you'll need to update one of the key file for settting environment variables for making LDAP executables. This file is called "$ORACLE_HOME/ldap/lib/env_ldap.mk". You will need to located the entry for CC=cc and change it to CC=gcc as follows:

...
# CC=cc
CC=gcc
...

Building a Sample Search Tool

The Oracle Internet Directory SDK release 3.0.1 provides a sample command line tool, samplesearch, for demonstrating how to use the C API to build applications. You can use samplesearch to perform LDAP searches in either SSL or non-SSL mode.

You can find the source file (samplesearch.c) and the make file (demo_ldap.mk) in the following directory: $ORACLE_HOME/ldap/demo.

To build the sample search tool, enter the following command:

# make -f demo_ldap.mk build EXE=samplesearch OBJS=samplesearch.o

NOTE: You can use this make file to build other client applications by using the C API. Replace samplesearch with the name of the binary you want to build, and samplesearch.o with your own object file.