We wish to store some data in 389 Directory Server LDAP that doesn't fit that well into the standard set of schema's that come with the product. Nothing too amazing, things like:

• when the customer joined
• are they currently active
• customer certificate[1]
• which environment they are using

My question is this: should we register with OID and start writing up our own custom schema OR is there a standard schema definition not provided by Directory Server that we can download and use that would fit our needs? Should we munge/hack existing attributes and store the data among there (I'm strongly opposed to this, but would be interested in arguments about why its better than extending)?

[1] I know there is a field for this userCertificate but we don't want to use it to authenticate the user for the purposes of binding

Using CentOS 5.5 with 389 Directory Server 8.1