To make OLAT more widely used and more flexible, it is necessary to extend OLAT whit an LDAP authentication module. Many Universities are using LDAP as their standard authentication mechanism and due to its missing LDAP module decided not to use OLAT as their main LMS.

The new module should support all the important LDAP servers and the SASL authentication mechanisms. The LDAP data structure as the main database of user information should automatically sync the OLAT user attributes. LDAP authenticated users should be able to use the same functions in OLAT as users authenticated using Shibboleth.

The implementations will be programmed in Java. Functions of Spring LDAP, Acegi, and wherever necessary JNDI will be used to realize this interface.