One thing hasn’t changed much in the 10-plus years I’ve been writing this newsletter — I still enjoy a good rant from time to time.
In April 2001 I was evidently in rare rant form as I took on targets big and small. LDAP is a protocol, not a directory schema, and I was fighting then (as now) for the proper use of the term.
I pointed and smirked at some poor soul who posted to a support forum asking: “From the way I understand it, I could actually include the [Exchange Instant Messenger] into my web using LDAP. I have just started reading up on LDAP and it seems to come with Active Directory in Windows2000. My question is: Is there anyway to set up LDAP without going through the Active Directory setup on my computer which is running Window2000 server?”
Sadly, there’s still the same level of understanding of LDAP today.
THE GOOD FIGHT: LDAP misconceptions live on
Then I took on CA Technologies and Critical Path, both of whom had (at the time) x.500 directories running on relational databases. You’d expect they’d know what LDAP is (a protocol for accessing x.500 directories), wouldn’t you? But no. One exec told me “LDAP bigots should stop beating up x.500 and finally admit that x.500 nicely complements LDAP.” It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.
Finally, I took a shot at the venerable Tim Berners-Lee who was just beginning his crusade to create the semantic web (See Scientific-American, May 17, 2001, “The Semantic Web”). I wasn’t impressed. “Too bad that, in describing the changes necessary to create the semantic web, he ends up actually describing a directory service!” was how I put it. Ironically, I pointed the finger at Berners-Lee and said, “As I’ve said here before, if your only tool is a hammer then every problem resembles a nail. So too with Berners-Lee who sees the Web as the answer to all problems, if only it would evolve in the way he prescribes.” Maybe I should look in the mirror and see if my only tool is LDAP!
I did have good things to say about one company. Ipedo was then a startup founded by former Critical Path VP Nick Zhang. Remarkably, Ipedo is still with us and Nick is still with Ipedo. Their “directory caching server” has evolved into Ipedo XIP, described as “a powerful data virtualization platform that allows organizations to aggregate and present information from disparate sources into their business intelligence, enterprise reporting, corporate portal, or service-oriented architecture (SOA) applications.” I still think it’s worth a look, and that’s no rant.
