David,
You are apparently confused about the relationship between NDS and LDAP. LDAP is an access protocol, which merely specifies the technical means for a client to connect to and get information from a directory service. LDAP is NOT a directory service by itself. There is no definition of an underlying data store, no definition of object classes or attributes, no security, no encryption, and no replication or fault tolerance.
The corresponding Novell "proprietary" technology is NDAP (Novell Directory Access Protocol). This is a very secure and robust protocol, many years ahead of LDAP in technical features.
You say "LDAP is much tighter and elegant than NDS", which is just a silly statement. Anyone who has tried to integrate and synchronize multiple directory services using LDAP as I have would realize this. No two vendors with LDAP-compliant services or clients define even something as simple as a user object the same way, let alone something as complex and dynamic as a router.
You say Novell was "forced" to add LDAP on top of NDS. Forced by who or by what? Novell was the first network or application directory service provider to ship LDAP support, so they weren't playing catch up with any competition. Everyone else is scrambling to play catch up with Novell.
You say the marketplace wasn't going to let NDS become the global standard for directory naming services. I would guess IBM, HP, Sun, SCO, Oracle, AT&T, NTT, Fujitsu, Deutsche Telecom, and other major vendors have a pretty big role in defining the marketplace, and they all have adopted NDS as a stregic directory technology.
Jerry |
