General-Purpose, Standards-Based Directories

Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services > 8. Namespace Design

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Chapter 8. Namespace Design

Designing a directory namespace is one of the most important tasks you will undertake when designing your directory service. Your directory namespace provides the basic means by which you reference information in your directory, but it has many other implications as well. A properly designed namespace can lead to

  • Easier data maintenance

  • More flexibility in setting access control and replication policies

  • The ability to satisfy a wider variety of directory-enabled applications

  • More natural navigation through the directory

  • Happy directory users and administrators

On the other hand, a poorly designed namespace can lead to administrative hassles when directory entries change names , replication or access-control requirements change, or users try to find information. In the worst case, a redesign is necessary to support some vital new directory application. The result of this poor design is generally unhappy directory users and certainly frustrated, overworked administrators.

The namespace you design for your directory has far-reaching implications that are often not at all obvious when you set out. The design of your namespace can affect replication, whether and how you are able to partition your data among servers or distribute administration of the directory, and other aspects of the service. Furthermore, changing your namespace after you've designed and deployed your directory service is a difficult task, unpleasant for administrators and often inconvenient for users.

This is what makes namespace design one of the most critical tasks you will face during your directory design process. Don't be surprised if your initial namespace design proves inadequate when you move on to designing your replication or access control framework, or even when you begin to pilot your directory service. Don't be afraid to redesign during these early stages; a later redesign is much more costly.

This chapter introduces the fundamentals of namespace design, starting with a brief review of the syntactic structure of an LDAP namespace, followed by the purposes of a namespace. Next, we describe how to analyze your namespace needs and design the best namespace for you. Several different namespace designs addressing a variety of needs and environments are presented near the end of the chapter, followed by a checklist of things to consider when designing your namespace. As always, we also list sources for further reading on the subject.



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

design
          namespace 2nd 3rd 4th
directories
          namespaces 2nd 3rd 4th
namespaces 2nd 3rd 4th

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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