From: Mike Jackson Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2014 2:02 AM
In any case, dynamic configuration IS an enterprise-grade/carrier-grade feature as opposed to static configuration. It enables you to perform critical adjustments to your service without interrupting your service (more or less depending on the implementation).
You seem to be confusing the concept of "dynamic configuration", the ability to change the configuration of a running service without having to stop said service or disrupt providing the service, with the concept of where the configuration is stored, in a flat text file or in a database.
There is absolutely no reason why openldap could not support dynamic configuration when the configuration is stored in a flat text file. There are numerous examples of services which store their configuration in a flat text file, and are capable of rereading that file and dynamically changing the running configuration based on the changes found.
Yes, the current implementation of openldap only supports dynamic configuration when the configuration is stored in an LDAP database, but that is not an inherent limitation of storing configuration in a flat text file, but simply the preference of the openldap developers. If they chose to do so, they could absolutely implement a similar dynamic configuration for flat text file configuration. The merits of flat text versus LDAP database configuration have been debated to no end, and I don't intend to reopen that discussion, but rather simply to point out it was a choice and not a restriction.
If you don't see why dynamic configuration is a good idea, then you probably shouldn't be using LDAP for anything too important, anyway.
I guess if we're going to play at being haughty, perhaps people that cannot differentiate between where the configuration is stored and how it is processed shouldn't be using LDAP for anything too important, anyway…
I personally believe that support for static configuration should be removed already because having two different configuration systems in place serves to confuse a lot of people, especially learners.
That statement is true; but if you had to pick which configuration system confused more people, especially learners, it wouldn't be the flat text file implementation…