Does LDAP fit the role of a user database for an application?

Posted by Spredzy on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Spredzy
Published on 2013-06-25T15:05:34Z Indexed on 2013/06/25 16:23 UTC
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ldap

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authentication

I (my company) run a webservice that integrates pieces of few entreprisey-level software.

Most of them offer different type of authentication but all offers at least LDAP.

I was wondering if storing my application users directly in an LDAP directory would be a good idea. This way all the application I am using could rely on it for authentication purpose.

I am aware that LDAP is not a database per se, but it is a datastore. I am also aware that there is no kind of constraints thus deleting a user on the LDAP directory won't do anything on my actual data, but this case would be taken care of with an extra process.

My main question here is : is there any reason why I shouldn't use LDAP as my users database ?

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