PingDirectory

Considerations for synchronizing from a database source

When synchronizing from a database to a directory or relational database management system (RDBMS) server, the following are recommended:

Identify Database Entry Types

Identify the database entry types that will be synchronized, and:

  • Set the database-entry-type property on the Java database connectivity (JDBC) Sync Source (this is required), and make sure the entry types are what the triggers are inserting into the change tracking mechanism.

  • Create a Sync Class per entry type, and set different mappings and rules for each one.

For each Sync Class, do the following:

  • Make sure the include-filter property is set to match the entry type.

  • Create a specific attribute mapping for every database column to be synchronized to an Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) attribute and set it on the Sync Class. If this is done, the script will not have to know about the schema on the directory side.

  • Create a distinguished name (DN) map that recognizes the DNs generated by the script and maps them to the correct location at the destination.

  • Remove the default value of "-all-" from the auto-mapped-source-attribute property on the Sync Class, and replace it with the value objectClass. The object class for the fetched source entry is determined by the scripted layer. Values from the database should not be automatically mapped to an attribute with the same name, except the objectclass attribute, which should map directly for CREATE operations. If this is not done, an error is generated.

  • Change the destination-correlation-attributes property to contain the attributes that uniquely represent the database entries on the directory server destination.

Avoid Bidirectional Loopback

Set the ignore-changes-by-[user\|dn] property on both Sync Sources when configuring for bidirectional synchronization, to make sure that changes are not looped back by PingDataSync.

See Using the create-sync-pipe tool to configure synchronization for details about creating the Sync Pipe.