Appendix D. Synchronization Reference

Table of Contents
D.1. Object-Mapping Objects
D.2. Links
D.3. Queries
D.4. Reconciliation
D.5. REST API

The synchronization engine is one of the core services of OpenIDM. You configure the synchronization service through a mappings property that specifies mappings between objects that are managed by the synchronization engine.

{
  "mappings": [ object-mapping object, ... ]
}

D.1. Object-Mapping Objects

An object-mapping object specifies the configuration for a mapping of source objects to target objects.

 {
  "name"            : string,
  "source"          : string,
  "target"          : string,
  "links"           : string,
  "validSource"     : script object,
  "validTarget"     : script object,
  "correlationQuery": script object,
  "properties"      : [ property object, ... ],
  "policies"        : [ policy object, ... ],
  "onCreate"        : script object,
  "onUpdate"        : script object,
  "onLink"          : script object,
  "onUnlink"        : script object
}
Mapping Object Properties
name

string, required

Uniquely names the object mapping. Used in the link object identifier.

source

string, required

Specifies the path of the source object set. Example: "managed/user".

target

string, required

Specifies the path of the target object set. Example: "system/ldap/account".

links

string, optional

Enables reuse of the links created in another mapping. Example: "systemLdapAccounts_managedUser" reuses the links created by a previous mapping whose name is "systemLdapAccounts_managedUser".

validSource

script object, optional

A script that determines if a source object is valid to be mapped. The script yields a boolean value: true indicates the source object is valid; false can be used to defer mapping until some condition is met. In the root scope, the source object is provided in the "source" property. If the script is not specified, then all source objects are considered valid.

validTarget

script object, optional

A script used during the target phase of reconciliation that determines if a target object is valid to be mapped. The script yields a boolean value: true indicates that the target object is valid; false indicates that the target object should not be included in reconciliation. In the root scope, the target object is provided in the "target" property. If the script is not specified, then all target objects are considered valid for mapping.

correlationQuery

script object, optional

A script that yields a query object to query the target object set when a source object has no linked target. The syntax for writing the query depends on the target system of the correlation. See the section on Correlation Queries for examples of some common targets. The source object is provided in the "source" property in the script scope.

properties

array of property-mapping objects, optional

Specifies mappings between source object properties and target object properties, with optional transformation scripts.

policies

array of policy objects, optional

Specifies a set of link conditions and associated actions to take in response.

onCreate

script object, optional

A script to execute when a target object is to be created, after property mappings have been applied. In the root scope, the source object is provided in the "source" property, projected target object in the "target" property and the link situation that led to the create operation in "situation". The _id property in the target object can be modified, allowing the mapping to select an identifier; if not set then the identifier is expected to be set by the target object set. If the script throws an exception, then target object creation is aborted.

onUpdate

script object, optional

A script to execute when a target object is to be updated, after property mappings have been applied. In the root scope, the source object is provided in the "source" property, projected target object in the "target" property, link situation that led to the update operation in "situation". If the script throws an exception, then target object update is aborted.

onLink

script object, optional

A script to execute when a source object is to be linked to a target object, after property mappings have been applied. In the root scope, the source object is provided in the "source" property, projected target object in the "target" property. If the script throws an exception, then target object linking is aborted.

onUnlink

script object, optional

A script to execute when a source and a target object are to be unlinked, after property mappings have been applied. In the root scope, the source object is provided in the "source" property, projected target object in the "target" property. If the script throws an exception, then target object unlinking is aborted.

result

script object, optional

A script to execute on each mapping event, independent of the nature of the operation. In the root scope, the source object is provided in the "source" property, projected target object in the "target" property. If the script throws an exception, then target object unlinking is aborted.

The "result" script is executed only during reconciliation operations!

D.1.1. Property Objects

A property object specifies how the value of a target property is determined.

 {
  "target" : string,
  "source" : string,
  "transform" : script object,
  "condition" : script object,
  "default": value
}
Property Object Properties
target

string, required

Specifies the path of the property in the target object to map to.

source

string, optional

Specifies the path of the property in the source object to map from. If not specified, then the target property value is derived from the script or default value.

transform

script object, optional

A script to determine the target property value. The root scope contains the value of the source in the "source" property, if specified. If the "source" property has a value of "", then the entire source object of the mapping is contained in the root scope. The resulting value yielded by the script is stored in the target property.

condition

script object, optional

A script to determine whether the mapping should be executed or not. The condition has an "object" property available in root scope, which (if specified) contains the full source object. For example "source": "(object.email != null)". The script is considered to return a boolean value.

default

any value, optional

Specifies the value to assign to the target property if a non-null value is not established by "source" or "transform". If not specified, the default value is null.

D.1.2. Policy Objects

A policy object specifies a link condition and the associated actions to take in response.

{
  "situation"  : string,
  "action"     : string or script object
  "postAction" : optional, script object
}
Policy Object Properties
situation

string, required

Specifies the situation for which an associated action is to be defined.

action

string or script object, required

Specifies the action to perform. If a script is specified, the script is executed and is expected to yield a string containing the action to perform.

postAction

script object, optional

Specifies the action to perform after the previously specified action has completed.

D.1.2.1. Script Object

Script objects take the following form.

{
  "type"  : "text/javascript",
  "source": string
}
type

string, required

Specifies the type of script to be executed. Currently, OpenIDM supports only "text/javascript".

source

string, required

Specifies the source code of the script to be executed.

D.2. Links

To maintain links between source and target objects in mappings, OpenIDM stores an object set in the repository. The object set identifier follows this scheme.

links/mapping

Here, mapping represents the name of the mapping for which links are managed.

Link entries have the following structure.

{
   "_id":string,
   "_rev":string,
   "linkType":string,
   "firstId":string
   "secondId":string,
}
_id

string

The identifier of the link object.

_rev

string, required

The value of link object's revision.

linkType

string, required

The type of the link. Usually then name of the mapping which created the link.

firstId

string, required

The identifier of the first of the two linked objects.

secondId

string

The identifier of the second of the two linked objects.

D.3. Queries

OpenIDM performs the following queries on a link object set.

  1. Find link(s) for a given firstId object identifier.

    SELECT * FROM links WHERE linkType
         = value AND firstId = value

    Although a single result makes sense, this query is intended to allow multiple results so that this scenario can be handled as an exception.

  2. Select link(s) for a given second object identifier.

    SELECT * FROM links  WHERE linkType 
        = value AND secondId = value

    Although a single result makes sense, this query is intended to allow multiple results so that this scenario can be handled as an exception.

D.4. Reconciliation

OpenIDM performs reconciliation on a per-mapping basis. The process of reconciliation for a given mapping includes these stages.

  1. Iterate through all objects for the object set specified as "source". For each source object, carry out the following steps.

    1. Look for a link to a target object in the link object set, and perform a correlation query (if defined).

    2. Determine the link condition, as well as whether a target object can be found.

    3. Determine the action to perform based on the policy defined for the condition.

    4. Perform the action.

    5. Keep track of the target objects for which a condition and action has already been determined.

    6. Write the results.

  2. Iterate through all object identifiers for the object set specified as "target". For each identifier, carry out the following steps.

    1. Find the target in the link object set.

      Determine if the target object was handled in the first phase.

    2. Determine the action to perform based on the policy defined for the condition.

    3. Perform the action.

    4. Write the results.

  3. Iterate through all link objects, carrying out the following steps.

    1. If the reconId is "my", then skip the object.

      If the reconId is not recognized, then the source or the target is missing.

    2. Determine the action to perform based on the policy.

    3. Perform the action.

    4. Store the reconId identifer in the mapping to indicate that it was processed in this run.

Note

To optimize a reconciliation operation, the reconciliation process does not attempt to correlate source objects to target objects if the set of target objects is empty when the correlation is started. For information on changing this default behaviour, see Reconciliation Optimization.

D.5. REST API

External synchronized objects expose an API to request immediate synchronization. This API includes the following requests and responses.

Request

Example:

POST /openidm/system/xml/account/jsmith?action=sync HTTP/1.1
Response (success)

Example:

HTTP/1.1 204 No Content
...
Response (synchronization failure)

Example:

HTTP/1.1 409 Conflict
...
[JSON representation of error]