RE: OpenLDAP in Production

["Howard Chu" <hyc@highlandsun.com>]

Sounds like that book is very much out of date. It's a shame, Addison-Wesley contacted me a year or two ago about writing an OpenLDAP book and I didn't have time to pursue it. One of these days...

The degree of polish in the tools and docs is somewhat immaterial in the end. You still need to be well-versed in X.500 and LDAP to make effective use of a directory, no matter who the software comes from. You still need expertise or support, but with OpenLDAP you don't need to pay ludicrous per-entry license fees. Bottom line - there are many businesses out there migrating to OpenLDAP, away from Sun/Netscape/iPlanet/Novell/whatever.

  -- Howard Chu
  Chief Architect, Symas Corp.       Director, Highland Sun
  http://www.symas.com               http://highlandsun.com/hyc
  Symas: Premier OpenSource Development and Support 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-openldap-software@OpenLDAP.org [mailto:owner-openldap-software@OpenLDAP.org]On Behalf Of Brian K. Jones

I was thumbing through the pages of an LDAP book in the bookstore and came across a paragraph about OpenLDAP, which said:

"...I personally know of people who have done significant testing and prototyping work using these products. However, I know of nobody who has yet trusted them to support his or her business applications. Bottom line: If you want to play with compiling and modifying your own LDAP server, this is a good place to start."

This is discouraging, as I had planned to put OpenLDAP into production, after evaluating eDir and, to a lesser extent, the Sun product.  Aside from GUI tools and docs (which I don't have a particularly dire need for), where is OpenLDAP lacking compared to eDir and Sun?  Why shouldn't I put this into production?  

Interestingly, the author doesn't give an opinion on Linux, and the first chapter in the book was 'Active Directory', IIRC.