Fast Group Membership Lookups in OID with the orclMemberOf Attribute

If you utilize nested and dynamic groups (and especially nested dynamic groups), then it can take a lot of effort and time to calculate all of a user’s group memberships in an LDAP directory.

First you have to search for the user and find the user’s DN. Then you have to search all your groups to figure out which groups your user is directly a member of. Then for each of those groups you have to search all your groups again to see which of those groups your user is a member of.

You have continue to search your groups with the results of each subsequent search until you reach the maximum desired level of nested memberships that you want to pursue or all the searches come back empty. All the while you have to keep yourself out of infinite loops created by repeating memberships such as when two groups are members of each other.

Many LDAP directories simplify things through a virtual “member of” attribute which is a virtual multi valued attribute containing all of the groups a user is a member of through both direct and indirect means.

It may have escaped your notice, but OID joined the party fairly recently (in 11.1.1.4 I believe) and now supports such an attribute. The attribute’s name is orclMemberOf. You can read all about the attribute here; but suffice it to say it is a dynamic multi valued attribute containing the groups to which a member belongs.

The membership includes both direct membership and indirect membership from nested groups. It also includes membership from dynamic groups and dynamic nested groups based on labeleduri.

The attribute value is computed during a search and is not stored. This means you will not see orclMemberOf populated in an LDAP data browser including ODSM. Further, the value is not returned by default in searches. You have to explicitly request it. Lastly, orclMemberOf cannot be used in a search filter.

One nice little additional feature thrown in is that the aliases of memberof and ismemberof are supported for compatibility with code written for compatibility with Active Directory and Oracle Directory Server Enterprise Edition (DSEE) / SunOne / IPlanet.

Below is a sample search with results for a specific user where I request and receive the value(s) of orclMemberOf.  You will also notice that nested memberships are returned multiple times, once for each group that the user belongs to that is a member of another given group.  So, watch out for that.

In a future post, I'll discuss how you can use the orclMemberOf attribute to greatly speed up authentication into WebLogic and Fusion Middleware Products such as SOA Suite and WebCenter which utilize WebLogic's security framework.

[oracle@oam1 bin]$ ./ldapsearch -h oam1.example.com -p 3060 -D cn=orcladmin -w Oracle1_g -b "cn=Users,dc=example,dc=com" -L -s sub -v "uid=tim.doyle" memberOf


ldap_open( oam1.example.com, 3060 )

filter pattern: uid=tim.doyle

returning: memberOf

filter is: (uid=tim.doyle)

dn: uid=tim.doyle,cn=users,dc=example,dc=com

memberof: cn=administrators,cn=groups,dc=example,dc=com

memberof: cn=groupofgroups,cn=groups,dc=example,dc=com

memberof: cn=nyusers,cn=groups,dc=example,dc=com

memberof: cn=groupofgroups,cn=groups,dc=example,dc=com

memberof: cn=nestgrp1,cn=groups,dc=example,dc=com

memberof: cn=groupofgroups,cn=groups,dc=example,dc=com

memberof: cn=oaamcsrmanagergroup,cn=groups,dc=example,dc=com

memberof: cn=groupofgroups,cn=groups,dc=example,dc=com

memberof: cn=oaamenvadmingroup,cn=groups,dc=example,dc=com

memberof: cn=groupofgroups,cn=groups,dc=example,dc=com

memberof: cn=oaamruleadministratorgroup,cn=groups,dc=example,dc=com

memberof: cn=groupofgroups,cn=groups,dc=example,dc=com

memberof: cn=product support group,cn=groups,dc=example,dc=com

memberof: cn=groupofgroups,cn=groups,dc=example,dc=com

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