Combining certificate cache and root CA database?

[Mikael Svensson]

Hello

As my thesis project will involve retrieving end-user certificates from 
various Internet servers it will benefit greatly from some form of 
certificate cache. As far as I know Minisip doesn't have certificate 
cache at the moment...

...unless the root CA database can be considered a cache. Which I think 
it can. My question is therefore: What about creating a more generic 
certificate management class, similar to the ca_db class but with 
additional support for end-user certificates and CRLs!?

My idea is to have the following classes and methods:
[ ca_db/CertDb ]
   - MRef<certificate*> findCertificate(subject, issuer)
   - void addDirectory(path, type)
   - void addFile(path, type)
   - void purgeCache()
     etc.

[ ca_db_item/CertDbItem ]
   - bool isSelfSigned()
   - int expiryDate()
   - bool isClr()
   - bool isRootCACert()
   - bool isEndUserCert()
   - MRef<certificate*> getCertificate()
   - string getIssuer()
   - string getSubject()
     etc.

Any thoughts on this? Is it better to extend the existing ca_db and 
ca_db_item classes or should caching and CRL support be implemented in 
entirely new classes?


Regards
Mikael Svensson