With most IT organizations needing directories to deploy and manage the next generation of enterprise applications, byzantine political battles between Microsoft, Novell, IBM, and the Sun-Netscape Alliance may delay adoption of what is a critical but still emerging technology.
In regard to directories, the industry as a whole took one giant step and one halting step in the right direction during the past two weeks.
At the Burton Group Catalyst conference in Squaw Valley, Calif., this week, the collective might of Novell, IBM, the Sun-Netscape Alliance, Oracle, and Microsoft rallied behind newcomer Bowstreet in the formation of an open group to create a directory standard based on Extensible Markup Language (XML), called Directory Service Markup Language (DSML).
The group intends to present the proposal for a new schema for XML that will allow directories to interoperate by providing a means for directory information to be accessed even when the specific data formats are unknown. Bowstreet contends that this standard will be a perfect fit with Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)-enabled products. In addition, several members of the DSML group, including Oracle, IBM, and Novell, had previously given their support to the Directory Interoperability Forum (DIF), which formed two weeks ago. The DIF intends to create a standard that will make use of LDAP to enable data queries across multiple directories.
The vendors described these two separate initiatives as complementary and said they will probably be joined at some future point.
"LDAP gives us a mechanism to query directories; XML gives us a mechanism to consistently format data," said Adrian Viego, general manager of strategic relations at Novell, in Berkeley Heights, N.J.
Although DIF and DSML are different animals - the former is an industry group and the latter is a technology specification - they should be somewhat complementary, according to one analyst.
"DIF is a confidence-building thing, and DMSL is more of 'let's take it to the next level,'" said Richard Villars, director of networking software at International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass.
But the truce declared by the companies involved is not definitive. The Sun-Netscape Alliance declined to join the DIF, according to Claire Hough, vice president and general manager of the directory and security division at Sun-Netscape, in Mountain View, Calif.
"[DIF] was too restrictive on the membership," Hough said. "DSML is open; it was more of the kind of way we want to do standards."
Microsoft also declined to join DIF because officials felt the company's work with LDAP and the Lightweight Directory Update Protocol (LDUP)isn't needed.
"We have questions about whether LDUP will solve customer problems," said Peter Houston, lead product manager for directory and infrastructures at Microsoft, in Redmond, Wash.
DIF and DSML are not the only major directory interoperability initiatives to be pushed. The Directory Enabled Networking (DEN) initiative, which Microsoft and Cisco started, and which the Internet Engineering Task Force is currently reviewing, is "an effort to standardize the way information about network elements, such as routers, is stored in a directory service," according to Houston, but has no relation to DSML or DIF.
"Conceivably you could take the DEN schema work and you could expose that information through XML, but ... there is no relation," Houston said.
The DSML group intends to submit its proposal to standards bodies on which the group will agree.
"The objectives of the specification are valid," said Jim Kobielus, an analyst at the Midvale, Utah-based Burton Group, which hosted Catalyst. "It's high time someone came up with a DSML standard."
Unlike most other industry proposals, Bowstreet managed to bring together the giants of the industry, including Novell and Microsoft.
Microsoft, meanwhile, plans to expand its use of XML following its recent acquisition of Zoomit technology, according to Houston.
"We'll definitely be expanding the Zoomit infrastructure to connect to XML," said Houston, who explained that the new technology will also be added to the Windows 2000 Active Directory.
"It won't hold up Windows 2000," Houston said.
For IT managers, DSML and DIF are a step in the right direction, analysts said, but tangible results are still a ways off.
"There's a lot of good feeling here," Villars said. "But also there's certainly not a lot that [users] can walk away with and start using tomorrow."
The Directory Interoperability Forum is at www.directoryforum.org. More information on DSML can be found at www.dsml.org.
This story from Infoworld.com Copyright © 1999 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
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