Building LDAP-Enabled Applications with Microsoft's Active Directory and Novell'

The only applied guide for LDAP development in Active Directory and NDS environments.

• LDAP—the open standard for directories
• Integrate LDAP into your Active Directory and NDS applications
• Explained by one of the world's top directory authorities!

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is an open, vendor-neutral standard for accessing directory information. Using LDAP, developers can transform directories built in Active Directory and Novell Directory Services (NDS) into extendable, multiplatform, Internet-enabled solutions. In this book, Bruce Greenblatt—one of the world's leading directory experts—shows exactly how to develop custom LDAP solutions in both Active Directory and NDS environments. With examples in Java, and with the near-universal access afforded by LDAP, this book provides the tools you need to make your distributed applications more widely available than ever before.

Greenblatt begins with a discussion of LDAP and how it fits in with Internet standards, then explains LDAP schema design and security concepts. After detailed coverage of LDAP implementations in Active Directory and NDS, and an overview of how to use LDAP with Java, Greenblatt gives a first-hand look at Internet directories in action and walks through three complete application case studies-storage management, e-commerce, and a Web-based chat room. He then demonstrates how to access LDAP-enabled applications using Java servlets, Java applets, and Active Server Pages. Finally, you'll learn about LDAP's limitations (and how to work around them!) and also how to use XML with LDAP. Background information on Internet technologies, networking, and security is provided throughout. You'll learn how

• LDAP can dramatically increase the reach of your distributed applications
• To enable LDAP in Active Directory and NDS applications, step by step
• To integrate LDAP technology into your own applications

This book is designed for Active Directory and NDS software developers, especially those involved with client-server or three-tier software development tools.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments.

PART I.

1. Introduction.
2. An Overview of LDAP and the Internet.
3. LDAP Overview.
4. Principles of LDAP Schema Design.
5. LDAP Security.

PART II.

6. Using an Installation of Active Directory.
7. Using an Installation of Novell's NDS.

PART III.

8. Building LDAP Programs Using Java.
9. Example LDAP Applications.
10. Limitations of LDAP.
11. LDAP and XML.
Index.