is there a future for user accounting (getpw* replacement)

[Anthony Pankov]

Greetings,

I'm   wondering  has  anybody  any  thoughts  about  user  accounting
provided at the system level? 

It seems that getpw* doesn't suit the needs of application services.
All  applications has some external/internal mechanism for storing and
retrieving  user  properties  (settings,  roles etc). Furthermore they
implement own security policy based on this mechanism.

Mostly it is done via LDAP connection or internal store (as for database).

It seems that all application developers will be more happy if OS will
have a few functions to do the things such as:
- list users of some type;
- get user properties specific to application;
- get  user roles specific to application
-?

Does   anybody   has   thoughts  about  what  OS  must provide to keep
applications consistency and make developers happier?

-- 
Best regard,
 Anthony  Pankov                         mailto:ap00 at mail.ru