Further Reading

Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services > 24. Case Study: A Large University > Applications

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Applications

The Big State directory service was driven by the white pages and email applications described earlier in this chapter. Many new applications from all parts of the campus began to be developed as soon as the directory infrastructure was available and robust. Following are a few of the more interesting applications:

  • Card key access.   The university operates several unstaffed computing sites for the exclusive use of current faculty, staff, and students. The departments have deployed card reader door locks at these sites and developed software for the readers that consult the directory to determine the status of individuals requesting access.

  • Software license tracking.   For funding purposes, the university wanted to track application usage on a school and college basis, so it developed its own license-tracking software. The campus software license server was modified to consult the directory to determine the school or college affiliation of users accessing licensed software.

  • Bulk email communications.   Occasionally, offices on campus need to communicate with all users in a certain department, school, or college, or with users who have a certain title or job description. For examples, sometimes the Registrar's office needs to communicate financial aid information to students, or the Personnel office needs to communicate benefit information to staff members . The directory team developed software that consults the directory and contacts the appropriate users. Because of the potential for abuse of this service to send "spam" (unwanted junk email), use of the service is carefully controlled.

  • Course registration.   The university developed an automated telephone registration system that allows students to register for classes over the phone. The directory is used to email students the schedule of the classes they register for.

  • Legacy email address book population.   As mentioned earlier, departments throughout the university have deployed various LAN email products. These systems generally do not have the ability to query the LDAP directory directly, so the campus directory is used as a data source to populate these directories with name and email address information.

  • Documentation finder.   The university's IT division uses the directory to store an index of campus computing documentation. This index is accessed by a Web application that can be used to locate and access documentation. In this case, the directory contains only documentation index information ”not the documentation itself.

  • Personal Web page finder.   A simple application allows users to locate the personal Web pages of other users. The directory is mined periodically as the source of this information.

The easy availability of the directory, coupled with some good, basic development tools, makes it easy for people to develop directory-enabled applications. As the scope of people developing directory-enabled applications increases , Big State is finding the need to develop more formal documentation and courses explaining how to program directory-enabled applications, how to design new schemas, how to avoid abusing the directory, and other topics.



Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services,  2002 New Riders Publishing
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Index terms contained in this section

applications
         leveraging
                    Big State University case study 2nd 3rd 4th 5th
Big State University case study
         leveraging
                    applications 2nd 3rd 4th 5th
case studies
         Big State University
                    leveraging 2nd 3rd 4th 5th
directories
         case studies
                    Big State University 2nd 3rd 4th 5th
leveraging
         Big State University case study
                    applications 2nd 3rd 4th 5th

2002, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.



Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services
Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0672323168
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 1997
Pages: 245

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