Implementing LDAP
Authors: Mark Wilcox
Venue:  (1999)

:There is growing interest in a standard way of providing access to personal information (e.g. "white pages" data) and reducing the number of logon id's a user is required to remember or administer. The LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) protocol is poised to be the solution to these problems. Since the IETF recently approved the version 3 of the LDAP protocol it is now really gaining steam as companies such as Sun, Novell and Microsoft are making their proprietary networks available as LDAP servers. Netscape has gone as far as to make LDAP (in the form of their Directory server) the linchpin of their overall enterprise strategy. Since the first release of Netscape Communicator and the version 3 of its servers, Netscape has provided the ability to access a LDAP server. Netscape's LDAP API's is derived from the original University of Michigan API and they have made the source public on their mozilla.org site. This means that their API can be used not only with Directory server, but any LDAP server. This book is intended for programmers and system administrators who need to build LDAP clients and install LDAP servers. It likely will also appeal to that group of experienced Web users who have heard about LDAP but wants a definitive reference on the subject. The topics covered in this book include: The reasoning behind a central, open standard protocol and how the major vendors are planning to expose their current proprietary protocols as LDAP servers How to implement a LDAP server in an organization's setting including how to migrate data from legacy applications into a LDAP server The Netscape LDAP API, including practical coded examples in C, Perl and Java. Sun's Java Naming and Directory Interfaces (JNDI), including practical coded examples Advanced functionality including referrals, replication, security and LDAP controls. A comprehensive reference section|AUTHORBIO: I am the Web Administrator for the University of North Texas (Denton), which is the 4th largest university in the state with 25,000 students. I have been in this position for over a year and a half. I have been a Web developer, trainer and administrator for nearly 4 years. One of the first tasks I was given was to provide a common way to search for student, faculty and staff email and phone numbers. That was my first introduction to LDAP and the Netscape Directory server (the Directory server was so new then, all the help menus said "Coming Soon"). Within the year, UNT decided to join the growing number of universities that are providing courses and library resources on the Internet, which require restricted access. Because of this I have become very familiar with LDAP and Netscape Directory server. We use the Directory server to provide a common means for user authentication for our on-line course related materials (such as courses and library reserves that are for UNT use only) and I have been active in our Directory services committee. This committee is where I have become more familiar with the other issues that surround putting in a central directory server (such politics, disparate user-id systems, legacy data). I also wrote a gateway to our Directory server for users to update their data (such as email and phone numbers) in Server-Side JavaScript that utilizes the Netscape JAVA Directory SDK. Because of this, I was able to write an article for Netscape's "View Source" developer's magazine. I spend at least an hour a day on the Netscape Directory developer's newsgroup and have recently been invited to become the Developer Champion for the Directory developer's newsgroup. There are only around 15 total Developer Champions.