APEX_LDAP vs DBMS_LDAP and authorization schemes in APEX.

Grrr..  This is the second time I am trying to post this.  The new communities here seem to have a strange way of failing to post properly.

My hair is going gray and I may soon be bald.  I cannot seem to get around a problem with APEX_LDAP and I cannot seem to figure out DBMS_LDAP.  It seems that APEX_LDAP is written to be easier to use, but DBMS_LDAP is older and less refined.

Below is some code I am trying to use for an authorization scheme.  It works, but only partially.  It works for our contractors but not employees.  Even though all of our users use the same format for their login name, they are not stored with the same information for their DN in our OID.  Now, because DBMS_LDAP has this property called filter, which can be used to target with property to use when searching the LDAP, I can use that to target the UID field instead of the CN and thus all of our users can use our OID for