LDAP: ACCESS & DATA ADMINISTRATION NEWSLETTER 08/21/04 Topics: LDAP Browser Interviews: Introduction and Softerra LLC Issue Contents: * LDAP Browser Interviews: Introduction * LDAP Browsers Interviews: Kirill Kovalenko -- Softerra LLC * Articles and Comments Welcome _______________________________________________________________ This newsletter is sponsored by Alessea Consulting. Business/IT Services for small and medium businesses. Specializing in network identity, project management, and business development. Visit us and read more about the Alessea difference. URL: http://www.alessea.com RSS: http://www.alessea.com/feed.xml _______________________________________________________________ By Hallett German Topic: LDAP Browser: Interviews Recently, your newsletter staff submitted a series of questions to all known MS Windows developers of LDAP Browser software. (Cygsoft, and CodeMerc were unable to be reached. We would love to include you as well.)These questions concerned product origin, development process, next product release, and more. Answers are printed here without revision except for minor changes. A few editors' notes are added for clarification. You can find the complete list of questions here: http://www.alessea.com/newsletters/questions.txt Topic: LDAP Browser Interviews: Kirill Kovalenko -- Softerra LLC Kirill Kovalenko is the Softerra Product Manager for Softerra LLC, which produces the popular products -- LDAP Administrator and LDAP Browser. You can learn more about them at http://www.softerra.com Q1. Why did you decide to create "yet" another LDAP directory browser when so many already exist? A. In 1999 we were working on a custom project that used OpenLDAP as a backend and we felt there was a lack of a visual LDAP browser/editor. Back in 1999 there were not so many LDAP Browsers on the market. Actually there was only one - java based browser/editor written by Jarek Gavor. At that time, Java was not a really good choice for us because of the big memory footprint and performance issues. So we decided to develop our own, "native" Win32 application for an internal use. When the custom project was done we made our LDAP Browser 1.0 available for free download and soon got hundreds of feedbacks about it, so we decided to continue the development. Q2. What is your process for deciding which features to include in future releases of your browser? Q3.How are these future release features captured? (e.g. User suggestions, employee input, bug tracking software:) A. A) Basic wish list was assembled during the time we were developing the custom application mentioned above. B) Users suggestions are always helpful and interesting. C) Dogfooding. Since we are a custom developing company our staff uses it from time to time and comes up with ideas/suggestions. Q4a. Against what "checklist" did you use to see if your browser was LDAP-standard compliant? A. I'm not sure what you mean by "checklist"... Our very original idea was to develop a pure LDAP client - completely standard compliant and without any vendor specific optimization / knowledge. Q4b. How do you track changes in the LDAP standard? How much time does your company spend doing this? A. In fact the progress in this area is very slow. Still, we keep changes tracking constantly through IETF drafts changes and OpenLDAP forums. Q5. Do you plan to continue upgrading the product for the near future? (Editor's Note: This discussion is about both products.) A. Yes, we do. We've just released a version 3.1 beta with a big number of interesting features. We have quite a big TODO list for 3.2 and 3.3. An SDK is also scheduled to be released this year. Q6. What are some of the features to be included in the next major release? A. Now it's too early to say something with confidence about version 4.0. We haven't yet decided when to start developing it and which features should be there. For now you can read about features introduced in version 3.1: http://www.ldapadministrator.com/resources/eng/help/la31/index.php?co ntent=ch03s01.html Q7. What lesser-known LDAP browser feature would your users might find helpful? A. [LDAP Browser/Administrator 2.X] Favorites could be extremely helpful, especially when one has to work with a certain entries located in a huge branch. With favorites one can avoid expanding the whole branch and access a particular entry with just two mouse clicks. [LDAP Browser/Administrator 2.X] One can significantly speedup entry expand if turn off the "Force to display the entry fetched last" option (Tools->Options->Interface) Q8. Do you plan to add an API so users can customize the product? If you have/had an API, what types of things do/might customers use it for? A. Yes we have an SDK. It's not published, because we feel that it's not ready yet. We are working on it now and are going to release it later this year. When published it allow writing different kinds of plugins. In some way would be like writing plugins for MS Outlook/MS Visual Studio/Eclipse/you name it. i.e. object model + events + + completely open API. Q9. Which LDAP Director Servers have you tested against? 1) OpenLDAP 2.0.X / 2.1.X / 2.2.X (Windows/Linux/FreeBSD) 2) Netscape/iPlanet/Sun ONE 4.X / 5.X / 6.0 (Windows/Linux) 3) Novell eDirectory - different versions / (Windows/Linux/Netware) 4) Active Directory 2000 and 2003 5) Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) 6) MS Exchange 5.5 7) enQuire 3.1, 3.6 8) IBM 3.22 / 4.0 (Linux/Windows) 9) ISODE m-Vault 10.1 10) OctetString VDE 1.10 1.52 2.0 11) Siemens DirX 6.X 12) Apache Directory Server 0.7 13) Checkpoint hardware firewall built-in server (probably OpenLDAP based) It's not a full list, it's only those I remember for sure... Note that some of them, like MS EXCH 5.5, have weird issues like absence of LDAP_NO_ATTRS(1.1) support and are not completely LDAPv3 compliant. We keep them for testing purposes. Q10. Describe your testing process (e.g. software used, process, tracking, etc) A. Almost all non-visual components have unit tests that are executed every day as a part of nightly build. Also we have a QA team that uses their scenario when something has changed seriously. Q11. What are some of the extremes that you have tested for (longest search, etc) A. We have a branch with 100K entries in it. I open it sometimes when I'm going to make a cup of coffee or to answer a big letter like this one. :) Also, one guy put 30Mb of Jpeg photos to his AD record. Unfortunately it's not always possible to see them because of underlying LDAP C API crashes sometimes handling such a big attribute. Topic: Articles and Comments Welcome I welcome 100-800 word articles for inclusion in future issues. Vendors and LDAP data administrators are particularly welcome. Of course, you receive full credit and ownership of your article. Thanks in advance for your help. Please feel free to comment on how useful it was and what you would like to see in the future. Contact me at hallett.german@alessea.com. ______________________________________________________________ About Hal German Hallett German has 20 years experience in a variety of IT positions and in implementing stable infrastructures. This includes directories/messaging architecture, deskstop support, and IT management. Hal is the founder of the Northeast SAS Users Group and former President of the REXX Language Association. He is the author of three books on scripting languages. Periodically, he writes articles on various business and IT topics. ______________________________________________________________ Contacting Hal German/Past Issues Mail: hallett.german@alessea.com Archive of the Identity Management newsletter: http://www.alessea.com/newsletters.htm _______________________________________________________________ Copyright Alessea Consulting 2004 _______________________________________________________________