Identity Manager 4.0.1 Driver for Scripting Implementation ... - NetIQ

5.5.2 Policy and Script Development
At this point you should have a list of what data will be synchronized, how events will be handled
and what application tools are available. It is time to develop the heart of your driver in policies and
scripts.
Many types of tasks can be handled in driver policies. You can import the driver configuration
provided with the Scripting driver, and then edit policies in Novell iManager. You can also edit
policies and simulate their operation in Novell Designer. The extensive functionality of policies is
outside the scope of this document, so you should refer to the appropriate publications at the Identity
Manager 4.0.1 Documentation Web site (http://www.novell.com/documentation/idm401).
It’s often difficult to write complex tasks inside policies, such as executing external commands,
processing input and output, and file I/O. Tasks requiring such operations are better suited in scripts,
where an entire language environment and tools are available. You can also accomplish many of the
operations performed in policies, so if you are more familiar with your scripting language than
policies, you can develop your driver more quickly by using scripts. Scripting languages such as
Perl and Shell scripts offer an environment that is often well suited for your target application’s APIs
or developer kits. For example, your target application might already contain Perl library routines
for manipulating the application’s identities.
Event Data Format
Event data is submitted to the scripts in name/value pair format. This format consists of lines
containing a name, an equal sign (=) and a value. Therefore each line is a name/value pair. Each
name/value pair is unique, but there can be multiple name/value pairs with identical names but
different values.
ASSOCIATION=BobUser
ADD_TELEPHONE=818-555-2100
ADD_TELEPHONE=818-555-9842
You typically don’t need to worry about the format. The script library provides functions for
retrieving event data.
Subscriber Script Development
After all Policy processing is complete, Identity Manager submits the event in XML format to the
driver shim. The driver shim submits the event data to the scripts.
In the default Scripting driver, the subscriber.sh script in the scripts folder is called. This script
does some preliminary processing, and then calls a routine from an included script. The included
scripts correspond to the Subscriber event types: add.sh, modify.sh, modify-password.sh,
delete.sh, rename.sh, move.sh, and query.sh.
For each event type, you should retrieve the information you need from the event data, submit
changes to the external application using application-provided tools, and return a status (such as
success or failure) to Identity Manager.
Event data is retrieved primarily using the IDMGETVAR function. For detailed information on how
to use IDMGETVAR, see Section C.1, “UNIX Shell (idmlib.sh) Reference,” on page 143.This
function returns an array of values corresponding to the name specified as the function’s parameter.
The following table shows many item names.
Customizing the Scripting Driver 47