standards

This book gives a good architect's or project manager's understanding of LDAP and of the difficulties inherent in deploying any complex mission critical software system. The book covers schema and name space design, security considerations, legacy integration, capacity planning, systems management and procurement. All of these issues are discussed in a vendor neutral tone, though the references are a bit heavy on Netscape publications.

This is not a programming book and this is not a product manual. For architects, this is a concept book rather than a reference book: After reading this book you will still need to spend hours pouring over your vendor's manuals figuring out how to implement your design. For a project manager, this book may deserve the "bible" moniker, with the checklists something that can be used to guide the deployment of many new systems. While there is one, quite good, chapter on application design, application design is not the focus. Tim and Mark's earlier book covers that topic in much more detail.

The book, at 850 pages, is long, but it should be easy going for a database professional. The book itself looks like it was laid out with an HTML browser's "Print" command.

If you are considering an LDAP deployment, using any LDAP server, you will find this book invaluable during the evaluation, planning and deployment process.

Though I have only read the first 3 chapters so far, I find this book better at explaining the concepts behind LDAP than Mark Wilcox's "Implementing LDAP". I wanted to understand more about this LDAP thing as a system designer (with a strong RDBMS background). Quite early on, the book explains the differences between directories, databases, file systems, FTP servers, DNS servers and Web servers.

I found the first 3 chapters well explained, and conceptual enough for my purposes. I do intend to go back and read "Part II: Designing your directory service", though I probably skip the rest, which is more useful to implementors. (The rest of the book covers deployment, maintenance, using LDAP with applications, and case studies).

I found the book easy to read, and would recommend the book as a general overview of LDAP that covers many angles.

Background:
LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is a software protocol that enables locating organizations, individuals, and other resources such as files and devices in a network, whether it is a public Internet or a corporate Intranet.

As LDAP adoption and deployment is increasing, the expanded second edition of "Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services" is published with more materials from the authors on the protocol and how to apply it effectively in different network environments.

Book Organization:
The book consists of twenty-six chapters divided into six major parts:
- Directory services overview and history
- Designing your directory service
- Deploying your directory service
- Maintaining your directory service
- Leveraging your directory service
- Case studies
The book begins by defining directory services and what they can offer for an organization then gets into the specifics of how LDAP organizes directories and handles queries with coverage of LDAPv3 extensions and the Netscape Directory Server.

The books then moves on to explore a wide range of topics such as designing directory services, naming, topology, replication, privacy, security deploying, directory services, implementation pitfalls, cost analysis, maintaining directory services, troubleshooting, and creating and enabling directory-service
applications.

The book offers help and advice for comparing "LDAP-compliant" products on features, management tools, reliability, performance, scalability, security, standards conformance, interoperability, cost, and other criteria. Then, having chosen a vendor, you'll walk through piloting your application
and testing it for performance, scalability, and reliability. Finally, the authors show how to put the system into production, keep it running smoothly and securely, provide for backups and disaster recovery, and make improvements over time.

The final section of the book presents four thorough deployment case studies, showing how diverse organizations can use LDAP as a simple, versatile solution for a wide variety of problems.

Is the book for you?
The book gives a good architect's or project manager's understanding of LDAP and of the difficulties inherent in deploying any complex mission critical software system.

For architects, this is a concept book rather than a reference book: After reading this book you will still need to refer to product manuals or reference books to help you figure out how to implement your design.

For a project manager, this book is valuable especially with the checklists, something that can be used to guide the deployment of many new systems.

Software developers would read the book to understand more on issues such as redundancy, security and privacy.

For IT professionals who are relatively new to the area, it is the book to read on LDAP.

General Comments:

- There are many specialized terms that are used without being defined or before being defined.

- There is a lot of superfluous material bringing the book to over 900+ pages requiring constant filtering on the part of the reader.

- The book offer more concepts that practical help. You will find a lot of managerial discussions, including talking to your users, piloting your directory and getting feedback. If you are looking to learn how to technically implement LDAP, these discussions will not interest you much.

- The book assumes that you have a good understanding of LDAP and Directory Services. The introduction chapters do not cover many basic concepts, many terms are not explained until used several dozen times, and there is no glossary.

- Managers will appreciate the sections on product selection, piloting an LDAP service, costing, disaster recovery, long-term maintenance, monitoring, and application development in a directory-centric world complete the picture.

- Several case studies are presented, including useful sidebars entitled "20/20 Hindsight".

The Good Stuff:
- Provides a lot of theoretical concepts
- Covers all aspects of LDAP deployment
- Discusses the design aspects of LDAP
- Designed to meet multiple needs
- Minimal knowledge of networking is assumed

The Not So Good Stuff:
- Not much on practical implementations
- Sometimes the explanations are too long
- With over 900 pages, the book is too long
- Sometimes hard to follow the line of thought
- A glossary of technical terms is not provided

Conclusion:

If you are planning to work with LDAP whether you are a network manager, a software developer, or an IT administrator, the book provides a lot of information which will help you define your directory requirements in detail and design a directory service that meets them. You will also ind the book valuable during the evaluation, planning and deployment process. However, if you are a programmer who is looking for a programming book or some kind of a product manual to help you setup LDAP services, this
is not the book for you. It is mostly targeted for architects as it is more of a concept book rather than a reference book.

In general, the text is full of advices and real-world deployment examples to help the readers choose the path that makes the most sense for their specific organization. I personally would recommend the book as a general
overview of LDAP and deployment scenarios.