Winston Bumpus, chair of the Directory Interoperability Forum,
introduced the DIF Open Meeting, which looked at directory
deployment and certification from the points of view of an
analyst, a directory customer, an application developer, and a
directory server vendor, and concluded with a panel discussion.
Chris Apple of DSI Consulting gave a presentation on The Directory Marketplace. He
described what directories are, why enterprises use them,
and what kinds of applications and services benefit from being directory-based.
He looked at current directory technology and future trends, at typical
directory deployment problems, and at improvements that we may
expect to see. He ended by saying that customers do not use directories
just for their own sake; they must see positive reasons why deploying directories
will help them.
Skip Slone of Lockheed Martin then presented A Customer's Perspective on Directories.
He made some controversial statements, which he
explained and elaborated in the course of his presentation.
There is no business justification for directories;
but there are many business drivers that lead to directories as a technical solution.
Businesses don’t care about directory protocols;
they care that the system works efficiently, and
that the technology does not get in the way of doing business.
LDAP is a failure; it has not delivered on X.500's promise of universal distributed naming.
Skip concluded by throwing down some challenges to the industry, including
to deliver directory products that truly interoperate.
This is a goal that LDAP certification can help to achieve.
Chris Apple gave a further presentation on Developing LDAP Applications.
He looked at the needs of users, administrators, developers,
and decision makers. He gave a technical overview of LDAP from
a developer's perspective, and put forward some useful application development
guidelines.
Ed Harrington of Nexor presented A Server Vendor's Viewpoint on
open directory standards and directory certification.
The directory server market is expanding rapidly. Applications are the
business drivers for this growth. Standardization is an enabler of
market growth. Directory is standardized, but certification is
needed to guarantee conformance and interoperability. Ed ended by
reviewing the different kinds of directory interoperability for which
certification is needed: server-server, application-server,
and application-application.
The DIF Open Meeting concluded with a panel session in which the
following points were made.
- The universal take-up of XML may lead to a migration from LDAP to other
directory access methods, but this will be slow, because of the current predominance
of LDAP solutions and the large customer base. There is a need to guard against
inflated expectations. New standards bodies are becoming involved, but a change
of venue does not guarantee success.
- The quality of standards, and their detailed interpretation, is very important.
Certification is the key to achieving this. It prevents "bug-for-bug compatibility".
Certification for complex applications may be
more complex than certification for simple ones.
- The DIF can play a unique role as a forum for both users and vendors
in prioritizing standardization activities, in helping to document best practice
for development and deployment, and in product certification.
