Praise for Novell Forge

Last March, Novell announced plans to jump into the open source software movement with both feet with the launch of the Novell Forge Web site (link below). In just these few short months almost 150 applications and services have been posted to the site for your review, edification, instruction and, of course, use.

Of these there are seven that we could put into the category of identity management. Those are:

1. LDAPTool: A Win32 LDAP Tool that lets you browse, search, modify, and create objects. It also enables you to read/create schema, carry out persistent search, read attribute values, and monitor eDirectory events. You can also create reports and export them to a tab separated text file, which you could import to Excel, Word, Palm, etc.

2. LDAPSnoop: A simple Win32 based tool for browsing and editing an LDAP compliant directory. While lacking the presentation capabilities of ConsoleOne it is useful for “exploring” a directory and retrieving the raw data in LDAP format, making it particularly useful to developers.

3. Novell Nsure UDDI Server: A Universal Description, Discovery and Integration  (UDDI) 2.0 registry built on directory services technology. It offers a secure access to the registry contents (authentication and authorization), unified account management, and distribution of the registry by leveraging directory services. It works with any LDAP (v3) based directory back end.

4. Directory Standards Database: A tool written in PHP intended to maintain a central MySQL database with all of your Object Naming Standards and Property Naming Standards.

5. Perl LDAP Test Administration Tool: This project demonstrates how to use a Perl script to perform search, add, edit, and delete functions against an eDirectory server using LDAP v3 compliant commands. Although the script itself is quite useful, the main use is as source code to be incorporated into other projects.

6. Novell Account Management SDK: Novell Account Management (NAM) uses Novell Directory Services user IDs and passwords to seamlessly provide a common authentication system that eliminates the need for password synchronization.

Account Management SDK provides C functions and an ActiveX control to use standard eDirectory authentication routines instead of building user ID/password tables into each application. The NAM SDK also provides access to other information stored in eDirectory. For example, it provides access to information like effective rights and security equivalence for authentication purposes. For Web masters, it provides information such as a user´s home directory. For applications such as e-mail list builders, it provides group membership information. NAM enables your applications to make use of the eDirectory constructs that you already have in place.

7. User Importer for eDirectory/NDS: This program lets you import users from a CSV file in to eDirectory/NDS.

Some applications and services require eDirectory, but others work with any LDAP v3 compliant directory service. This effort on Novell’s part is really commendable. It benefits the entire industry with little or no direct gain to the company (except, of course, good will). Bravo, Novell! As readers of this newsletter will know, that isn’t something I say very often these days.