Description:
Encompassing a lot of general-interest information on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), as well as detailed information on Novell Directory Services (NDS) eDirectory--Novell's implementation of the open LDAP standards--Novell's LDAP Developer's Guide has lots going for it. It's a good choice for anyone who's interested in LDAP, and a perfect choice for Novell shops. This book contains a full range of information about LDAP in the Novell environment, from implementation instructions for administrators to software engineering information that's of interest to developers. The programming material forms the core of this book, however; people who write LDAP applications for Novell will get the most out it. In discussing LDAP generally, the authors--all of whom are Novell employees who are involved in developing NDS eDirectory--rely heavily on prose to get details across to their readers. Schematic diagrams of directory trees and object hierarchies make concepts clearer, and commented code listings make it clear how software interacts with LDAP environments. Code listings, almost entirely in Java, are more prevalent in the 50 percent of the book that's concerned directly with software development. The authors take care to state the problem that they're solving, present the code that does the job, and call attention to specific portions of the code that illustrate new techniques. There's no shortage of opinions here, either. The authors usually explain what they consider the one way to do something, noting that other approaches exist, but aren't (in their opinions) as good. They make frequent reference to standards documents, too, so it's easy to do further research. --David Wall Topics covered: Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), particularly as it's implemented in the Novell Directory Services (NDS) eDirectory server. Software development for Novell LDAP environments gets top billing, with exploration of several LDAP software development kits (including those for C, Java, ActiveX, and the Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI)). The authors show how to write routines that connect to LDAP servers, search for information on them, and write modifications to the data. LDAP schema management gets attention, as do LDAP controls and extensions. There's also configuration and administration information here--all that you need, really.
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