The ABCs of LDAP: How to Install, Run, and Administer LDAP Services

When considering the life cycle of directory services, you will encounter many familiar concepts from software-development and project-management courses. We will not explain these concepts here. Instead, we will concentrate only on the specific concepts that apply to directory projects. Now let us have a closer look at the individual design phases. The steps described here are the steps that, after some experience, I have personally found useful. Unfortunately, there is no standard recipe on this subject. You will find many articles, books, and courses commenting on the steps involved in planning, designing, and implementing directory services. Exhibit 1 shows the life cycle of a directory. Note that it is not unusual to take the results of one stage and then take a step or two backward to refine a previous step.

Exhibit 1: Directory Life Cycle

There are many other versions of the life cycle of directory services, with some steps having additional refinements or subdivisions. The best way to proceed in your particular situation depends on your specific working environment, for example, the number of persons working on the project. Consider the following as a work list that must be completed before setting up and running directory services in your environment. Remember, furthermore, that there are no clear boundaries that clearly divide the single phases. For example, the step of "Analysis of data to be stored in your directory and data sources available in your environment" could be part of a planning stage as well as a design stage.

• Planning of directory services: Define the goal of the project, listing the objectives and producing a time plan.

• Design of directory services: Design the data the directory will hold, the schema, the tree, topology, and security measures.

• Implement design of directory services: At the beginning of the project, this may only he a prototype to verify that the design meets your requirements. If it does, you proceed to the next step; if not, you jump to the point where the design needs to be improved.

• Verify production and maintenance of directory services: In this step, you finally see if your deliverable actually meets the requirements under normal workload. This is also the moment where you begin to think about improvements. And so we are back at the first step.

Now you can break clown your directory project into subprojects, knowing that at the end of each subproject you will define the requirements for the next one.