> > Curious: What advantages do you see with Novell's directory server
> > over, say, OpenLDAP?
> >
>
> Well, NDS is a very nice product, unfortunately it isn't supported much
> by applications.
Why do you need this when it supports the LDAP standards?
Most apps that are worth anything will let you authenticate to LDAP and
bamm there goes your single sign-on solution. That's mainly what we're
trying to achieve. For our students we have one major APP left to
convert to using an LDAP authentication then students can access all of
their important info with 1 username and pw. It's a very sweet deal.
Email, Registration Info, and soon to be Blackboard. We also have an
in-house written app that lets students login to computers in campus
labs which, you guessed it, authenticates to LDAP.
Novell does offer extensive use of it's DirXML product. With this product
one can write a custom driver to let their system or app talk directly
to eDir.
The cool thing with this, using the example Novell always uses is,
a person would arrive at an HR dept. in an organization for his new job.
HR would enter him into their, say, Peoplesoft system. After this is
done and DirXML sees a new user, it will create his Novell account and
grant him access to folders/files he needs depending on the department
he will be working for. This will also create his email account and send
info to the key-shop that he needs keys for certain doors...
(That's what I want to do.) but then Novell
adds other stuff like send info to their cellular company that he needs a
phone/pager and on and on... what ever your business need some how a
message can be generated to at least get something started. Whether it's
an email sent to the guy in the key-shop or the "create this account"
command to the necessary Linux box, it can be done.
Sure this stuff doesn't work out of the box, but neither does Peoplesoft
and their software cost a hell of a lot more money.
> Novell's stuff is also such a pain in the arse to deal with and so
> horridly expensive it probably isn't worth it. With Netware 5.0
>I could not even get the ldap server talking to NDS properly. In theory
Granted NetWare 5.0 is not Novell's best product. I"m not sure why
they quickly came out with the NetWare 5.1 product, but I've seen
extremely solid performance out of the NetWare 5.1 line.
Things just work.
>Probably it is easier to get NDS/eDirectory working on linux
> than on Netware.
Not at all true. eDir was built for the NetWare kernel. Perhaps
the file systems will let one or the other be a little faster,
but the directory works excellent on either platform.
Brad B
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Received on 07/10/03
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