Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services > 24. Case Study: A Large University > Summary and Lessons Learned |
Summary and Lessons LearnedWe want to stress again that this case study does not describe the University of Michigan's directory service, although many of our experiences designing and deploying that system are reflected. Many of the decisions Big State made were a result of leading the charge into an immature and developing market. There were no books like this one available when Big State set about designing its service. Indeed, no one was quite sure what a directory was and all the things it would be used for. So the design and deployment was definitely a learning experience. One important lesson learned was that it is easy to become a victim of your own success. This happened to Big State, whose initial directory deployment should have been redesigned to address problems with the namespace and data handling procedures and to introduce vendor-supplied software. Unfortunately, the service was popular enough that making these kinds of sweeping changes proved problematic . Another important lesson learned was that the quality of data contained in various university data sources is relatively poor. These sources were thought to be the source of truth for information, but in fact they contained many errors. The increased visibility of these errors through the directory was partly responsible for raising general awareness of these data quality issues.
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2002, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. |