Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services (2nd Edition)

Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services > 26. Case Study: An Enterprise with an Extranet > Directory Drivers

Directory Drivers

In planning for these extranet applications, having several drivers led the designers to conclude that a directory service was essential to the deployment. The following requirements led them to this conclusion:

• Extranet applications must be manageable though delegation ”   Because there are over 800 retailers, each of which has several employees authorized to sell HugeCo products, it is expected that there will be at least several thousand user entries in the database at any time. To further complicate the management of this user information, each retailer is an independent business with its own employees . Clearly, to make it possible to manage user information, the creation, deletion, and maintenance of user account information must be delegated to the individual retailers.

• User information must be shared among multiple applications ”   There are several different extranet applications (order entry, personalized product notice generation, and so on) that would comprise the extranet suite, each of which needs to authenticate users and store customization information. Because a directory provides a standard method for storing and accessing this information over the network, it would make sense to place shared user information in a directory.

Index terms contained in this section

applications

         extranet

                    HugeCo case study

case studies

         HugeCo

                    managing extranet applications

                    sharing user information

directories

         case studies

                    HugeCo 2nd

extranets

         HugeCo case study

                    managing applications

                    sharing user information

HugeCo case study

          managing extranet applications

          sharing user information

sharing

         user information

                    HugeCo case study

users

         sharing information

                    HugeCo case study

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