Leveraging the Directory Service
| Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services > 23. Case Study: Netscape Communications Corporation > Directory Service Deployment |
Directory Service DeploymentThe next section of this chapter describes the steps taken to put Netscape's internal directory service into production. Product ChoiceNetscape is somewhat unique in that it is a leading developer of directory technology. Netscape's products include a high-performance directory server (Netscape Directory Server) and client software development kits (SDKs). Additionally, all of Netscape's SuiteSpot server family is now directory-enabled . Because of performance and support issues, Netscape chose to deploy its own products. PilotingThe pilot phase of the directory deployment was rather informal. The first directory pilot phase was conducted by the software engineers working on the 1.0 version of Directory Server, even before the software was officially released as a product. The developers created a directory that held information about employees (including telephone numbers , office locations, and electronic mail addresses), and they publicized the availability of the directory. The engineers also created an HTML-based interface that allowed employees to search for entries and update their own directory entries. At roughly the same time, the Netscape Communicator development team was adding LDAP capabilities to a pre-release version of the Netscape Communicator address book. The presence of the pilot directory allowed these developers to distribute pre-release copies of Communicator to employees and obtain valuable feedback on the design and usability of the address book user interface. 20/20 Hindsight: Enabling Schema Checking When the initial pilot phase began , not much thought had been put into analyzing schema requirements. To make it easier to add new attributes and object classes, schema checking was turned off (which allowed any attribute to be added to any entry in the directory). The developers running the pilot directory found this convenient because it allowed them to begin adding new attributes and object classes to the entries in the directory without modifying the schema configuration, assigning OIDs, and restarting the server. Unfortunately, this also allowed a number of inconsistencies to creep into the directory data. Because developers in other groups were also using the pilot directory to become familiar with LDAP, a number of unknown and misspelled attribute types were introduced into the data. Although these inconsistencies weren't such a serious problem in the pilot phase, they became troublesome when the pilot data was imported into the production service ”in which schema checking was enabled. A rather extensive process of cleaning up the pilot data was needed before it could be imported. The pilot data could have been discarded; however, many employees had come to depend on the data stored in the pilot server, so it was decided to retain as much data as possible. In retrospect, it would have been better to enable schema checking even during the early stages of the pilot to avoid this problem. After initial deployment of the directory, several other pilots focused on new directory-enabled applications being developed. One such application was the Mailing List Manager (MLM), which replaced an older application that used proprietary databases to manage internal and external mailing lists. These lists were migrated into the directory, and a new, HTML-based management interface was developed, piloted, and deployed. Going ProductionThe production rollout of the Directory Server coincided with the rollout of the Netscape Messaging Server. These steps were followed:
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Index terms contained in this sectioncase studiesNetscape Communications Corporation piloting 2nd 3rd product choices production rollouts 2nd deployment Netscape Communications Corp. case study piloting 2nd 3rd product choices production rollouts 2nd directories case studies Netscape Communications Corporation 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th enabling schema checking Netscape case study 2nd Netscape Communications Corporation case study piloting 2nd 3rd product choices production rollouts 2nd piloting directory software Netscape Communications Corp. case study 2nd 3rd production rollouts Netscape Communications Corp. case study 2nd piloting 2nd 3rd product choice rollouts Netscape Communications Corp. case study 2nd piloting 2nd 3rd product choice schema checking enabling 2nd software directory Netscape Communications Corp. case study |
| 2002, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. |
EAN: 2147483647
Pages: 245