Directory Services: Design, Implementation, and Management
A guide to understanding and implementing a variety of directory services.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Directory Services: Design, Implementation, and Management
Chapter 3: Standards-Based Directory Services
by Bob Johnson
3.1 Introduction
This section talks about the three standards-based directory technologies X.500, the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), and the Domain Name Service (DNS). During the early to mid-1990s, the trade magazines were rich with articles about X.500 directory products, implementation stories, and lessons learned. The question arose: When all the computers are connected, how in the world can you find anything? Directories were one of the technologies that offered great potential in unlocking the power of the Internet.
Then came the World Wide Web (the Web) we used to call it the World Wide Wait and suddenly electronic directories were just not interesting anymore. Almost overnight, articles about directories disappeared from the trade journals. Everything was being put onto the Web, and everyone in the world had just gotten his or her very own Uniform Resource Locator (URL). And again the question arose: When everything is put onto the Web, how in the world can you find anything?
3.1.1 A short digression
This takes us to a very interesting distinction between electric directories and the Web. When you search the Web, you are often looking for specific information about tires, fishing rods, mortgage rates, and so on. Web search engines such as Yahoo!, Excite, and Google (my personal favorite) allow you to enter keywords, then dredge through a huge pile of words extracted from hundreds of millions of Web pages and kick back all the entries that match your query. The more words you enter, the closer the match.
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