[Dovecot] SASL

I've been browsing the wiki and thru my mail-list archives but haven't found an answer. does/can dovecot 0.99.x support authenticating with a SASL database?

I'll be setting up a new mail server for my offices using Sendmail/MIMEDefang/ClamAV/etc with dovecot as the IMAP server.

I'm not familiar at all with LDAP. I know that sendmail will authenticate to a SASL database and it's fairly easy to setup. My goal is that I can support "real" users (actual user accounts) but allow their mail passwords to be different than their login passwords, and changeable via some sort of CGI interface.

(I also have 2 weeks to accomplish this)

any assistance is appreciated

alan