Directory Drivers

In planning for these extranet applications, having several drivers led the designers to conclude that a directory service was essential to the deployment. The following requirements led them to this conclusion:

• Extranet applications must be manageable through delegation . Because there are over 800 retailers, each of which has several employees authorized to sell HugeCo products, there are expected to be at least several thousand user entries in the database at any time. To complicate the management of this user information further, each retailer is an independent business with its own employees . Clearly, to make the management of user information possible, the creation, deletion, and maintenance of user account information must be delegated to the individual retailers.

• User information must be shared among multiple applications . Several different extranet applications (order entry, personalized product notice generation, and so on) would constitute the extranet suite, each needing to authenticate users and store customization information. Because a directory provides a standard method for storing and accessing this information over the network, it would make sense to place shared user information in a directory.