Thanks, shmem but using these technologies requires authentication on it's own. Most of what I need to store is just simple metadata that requires no security. Therefore, Kerberos and LDAP are a little overkill for my needs.
What I am truly looking for is a module that identifies the OS, and then chooses an appropriate location for storing metadata. Depending on context and privileges, this can be in the user's profile directory, or if running as a privileged user, in "/var" or "C:\Windows\something" (sorry not a windows geek).
Perhaps this doesn't exist, and I should just write my own :-)
