Book Club

I felt the first four chapters provided a rock solid introduction into the foundations of LDAP. Carter brings the reader up to speed on the multitude of LDAP acronymns. Chapter Five provided a good introduction into replication, but ended with a seemingly out of place discussion custom schemas and SASL.

The chapter regarding a migration from NIS to LDAP was superb. Many sysadmins (such as myself) would likely be researching LDAP as a replacement for an existing authentication scheme. This chapter provides a side-by-side comparison, and maps the features of NIS onto LDAP.

The second half of the book, chapters six through ten, added depth, but are only useful to a select few sysadmins. I felt the final chapter, regarding Perl, did not deserve the depth paid to it. Rather than discuss one particular LDAP API, a broad overview of many APIs would be more appropriate. Perhaps a short example of Perl, PHP, C++, and Java. Then provide a website covering each API in depth.

I would have also appreciated more coverage of the ever popular LDAP/Kerberos combination. Both Active Directory and Mac OS X utilize such a combination in their authentication schemes.

There were also a surprising number of typos in the first half of the book. A good proofreading before a second edition would help.

Over all, I felt the book was a solid introduction into the workings of LDAP, and would recommend it to any sysadmin interested in deploying OpenLDAP on a Linux/Unix system.

Review by: Norman Elton
May 3, 2004