Contacting Us

If you have comments or suggestions about this book, or if you'd like to tell us about an interesting directory deployment or application you've developed, we'd like to hear from you. Feel free to drop us a line at the following addresses:

We'll try our best to get back to you, but keep in mind that we all have day jobs!

Acknowledgments

We'd like to thank our management and the publishing relations department at Netscape, whose support enabled us to write this book. Specifically, our thanks go out to Suzanne Anthony, Ben Horowitz, Claire Hough, William Morris, John Paul, Neel Phadnis, Susan Walton, and David Weiden.

In addition, we'd like to thank the Netscape IS department for its help with the first edition of this book. Bob Ferguson, Gene Irvine, and especially the incredible Leif Hedstrom deserve special thanks.

We'd like to thank the people who reviewed parts of this book, including David Boreham, Kathleen Brade, Nancy Cartwright, Leif Hedstrom, Richard Hesse, Chuck Lever, John Merrells, Rob Powers, Gordon Shephard, Mike SoRelle, and Chuck Woods.

We'd also like to thank the publishers. Thanks to Brett Bartow, Linda Engelman, Jessica Goldstein, and Dayna Isley for their guidance and gentle prodding. Special thanks to Kitty Jarrett for her professionalism in making the process of creating the first edition go so smoothly. Also, thanks to Benjamin Hart, Greg Pearson, Louis Porter, Jr., Mary Ellen Stephenson, Chris Wilcox, and Laura Williams for their work on the first edition. And last but not least, thanks to Geneil Breeze, Audrey Doyle, Elizabeth Finney, Stephanie Hiebert, Heather McNeill, and Elizabeth Ryan for their work on this edition.

About the Authors

Timothy A. Howes is cofounder, CTO, and Executive Vice President of Development at Opsware Inc., the leading provider of data center automation software. Prior to cofounding Opsware, Dr. Howes was Vice President of Technology for America Online, Inc., where he worked on technology strategy, acquisitions, and investments. Before that, he was a Netscape Fellow, Chief Technology Officer of Netscape's Server Products division, and chief architect of several Netscape server products. Dr. Howes coinvented the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), the Internet standard for directories. He has coauthored two books on directories and has written or cowritten more than 20 Internet Requests For Comments (RFCs). Dr. Howes is a former member of the Internet Architecture Board and former cochair of the LDAP Extensions, ASID, and IDS working groups in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Before joining Netscape, Dr. Howes was a researcher and National Science Foundation project director at the University of Michigan. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Michigan.

Mark C. Smith is the chief architect for directory products at Netscape Communications Corporation, an AOL Time Warner company. Mark is responsible for the technical evolution of Netscape Directory Server and several other AOL products and services. He was previously a driving force behind the University of Michigan's LDAP implementation and a key designer of the university's directory service. Mark is coauthor of LDAP: Programming Directory-Enabled Applications with Lightweight Directory Access Protocol and has written many RFCs and Internet Drafts. He has a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from the University of Michigan. Mark lives in Saline, Michigan, with his wife, Kathy; his daughter , Christina; and his son, Thomas.

Gordon S. Good is a senior software engineer at Opsware, Inc., a provider of IT automation software. Previously Gordon was a senior developer at Netscape Communications Corporation, where he led the directory server replication development team. Prior to joining Netscape, he was instrumental in the development of the University of Michigan's LDAP implementation and in designing and running the university's Web and e-mail services. Gordon has also written several Internet Drafts and RFCs on directories.