LDAP: Federate or Aggregate part 2
Tags :LDAP
Ok, I know by page and RSS hits you read this
yesterday but no comments. So I will finish up today with some information
on aggregation and see if it generates the need for more discussion.
So now you might have decided that having
a single directory is a great idea instead of federating and having a bunch
of people managing directories everywhere. We know what happens when
multiple areas have the ability to change things at will. Plus keeping
a schema in check might be difficult. So off we now run to grab all
this data and get it into an aggregated directory. While pulling
from multiple Domino Directories into a single Directory Catalog is the
easiest answer, we all know that it never seems to be the case.
Remember when all of your directory objects were in
one tree? But then people began developing separate trees for security
reasons, which led to federated trees (i.e., trees that were related and
could exchange some information). Microsoft coined the term "forest"
for a related group of trees, which (naturally) lead to implementations
of multiple forests. Where will it end? Will a grouping of related forests
be called a "park"? Could there be related parks? It's all Microsoft's
fault, (but then, what isn't?).
I pulled that quote to lead your thought
down the path that just because you know all the trees in your forest,
doesn't mean you can get all tress to move into your home without a fight.
To aggregate to a central directory structure you face the same issue
as federating, a common schema makes the integration much smoother for
you.
I often go with this gameplan: federate
now to get lookups and authentication functioning and move to aggregated
at an aggressive pace. If you can work out the necessary schema modifications
across the directories, you will find that this is not a difficult task
but someone must decide how it will look. If left open to numerous
discussions, the schema will never get decided and the LDAP integration
projects come to a stop.
Whew, it is getting late and it strayed
from aggregation some, but Domino has built in functionality to provide
for aggregation with an easily modifiable schema and LDAP standards support.
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On Wednesday, June 9th, 2004 by Chris Miller
