Ludo's sketches: Ludovic Poitou's blog

One of the things we're the most proud of in the OpenDS project is the simplicity of installation and initial configuration, thanks to the Java Web Start QuickSetup installer. We say that you can download, install and configure OpenDS to run on your machine in less than 3 minutes and 6 clicks.
But OpenDS can also be downloaded as a Zip and installed with the setup program, which can be either graphical or in command line and even used in silent mode.
The OpenDS community is often full of resources and Lucas Rockwell pointed out to his script for downloading and installing OpenDS automatically. I've taken the liberty to improve his idea and show it here :

#!/bin/sh

# This is the OpenDS version number to install
VER=2.2.0-RC2

# Download with curl or wget, uncomment the preferred download method
curl -O http://www.opends.org/promoted-builds/${VER}/OpenDS-${VER}.zip
# wget -nd http://www.opends.org/promoted-builds/${VER}/OpenDS-${VER}.zip

unzip OpenDS-${VER}.zip

cd OpenDS-${VER}/

# Some possible option change :
# Replace -d 20 (generate sample data with 20 entries) with -a (create
# top entry) or -l <ldifFile> (load data from the LDIF file)
# Change -w "secret12" with -j /tmp/me/passwordfile to avoid hardcoded
# cleartext password
# Add -O to avoid starting the server after install
# Add -Q for a quiet install
# ./setup --help for more information on options
./setup --cli -n -b "dc=example,dc=com" -d 20 -p 1389 \
--adminConnectorPort 4444 -D "cn=Directory Manager" \
-w "secret12" -q -Z 1636 --generateSelfSignedCertificate

As you can see, it's really trivial and it does the work from a few seconds to a few minutes depending on the speed of your internet connection.
The script can be downloaded here.
Have fun !

Technorati Tags: directory-server, java, ldap, opends, opensource

The OpenDS development team is very pleased to announce the immediate availability of OpenDS 2.2.0-RC1 which is the first release candidate for OpenDS 2.2.

OpenDS 2.2 offers the following new features from OpenDS 2.0 :

• Scalable import and indexing
• External changelog compliant with the Internet-Draft "Definition of an Object Class to Hold LDAP Change Records", draft-good-ldap-changelog-04.txt
• Fractional replication
• Extensible matching rules for time base attributes
• Support for custom syntaxes based on substitution, regular expressions or enumeration
• Remote server management in control panel
• Recurrent tasks in control Panel
• Default automatic Backup in the control panel
• Separation of LDAP Servers and Replication Servers for replication
• Ability to merge disjoint replication topologies
• Dsconfig script friendly mode

We've also captured a first snapshot of the OpenDS 2.2 documentation and hosted it on it's own wiki: https://docs.opends.org/2.2/. The documentation is not complete yet, but will be almost at the same time we will do the final release of OpenDS 2.2.

The purpose of the Release Candidate is to solicit one last round of testing before the final release. So please test the OpenDS release with your client applications, in your environment or on your favorite platform.

If you do find a bug, please report it with Issue Tracker.

We welcome feedback. Please report you experience with OpenDS on our mailing lists, or on #opends IRC channel on Freenode.

OpenDS 2.2.0-RC1 is built from revision 5941 of our source tree.

The direct link to download the core server is: http://www.opends.org/promoted-builds/2.2.0-RC1/OpenDS-2.2.0-RC1.zip

The direct link to download the DSML gateway is: http://www.opends.org/promoted-builds/2.2.0-RC1/OpenDS-2.2.0-RC1-DSML.war

We have also updated the archive that may be used to install OpenDS via Java Web Start. You may launch that using the URL http://www.opends.org/promoted-builds/2.2.0-RC1/install/QuickSetup.jnlp, or visit https://www.opends.org/wiki/page/OverviewOfTheQuickSetupTool for more information.

Detailed information about this build is available at http://www.opends.org/promoted-builds/2.2.0-RC1, including the detailed change log

Major changes incorporated since OpenDS 2.1.0-build002 include:

• Revisions 5870, 5888 (Issue #4181) - Resolves a Null pointer exception in DSML Gateway with specific substring search filters
• Revision 5871 (Issue #4217) - Fixes an issue with ACI containing parenthesis in the description field
• Revision 5874 - Improves the rebuild-index processing for performances
• Revision 5880 (Issue #4252) - Fixes a replication issue between OpenDS 2.1/2.2 and OpenDS 2.0
• Revision 5883 (Issue #4203) - Fixes an issue where restore -l (list the available backups) would exit with return code 1
• Revision 5926 (Issue #4257) - Fixes an error raised when deleting recurrent tasks

Technorati Tags: directory-server, java, ldap, opends, opensource, performance, quality, replication

Arnaud a co-worker from the Sun directory engineering team, has taken the term "Directory Engineering" to a new level. Arnaud has always been a doer, someone who starts playing with things, investigate, test, benchmark... Recently, he's been deploying OpenDS on Amazon cloud, configuring a Sun workstation running OpenSolaris with 4 displays in Xinerama mode and much more... 

But in the past few weeks, Arnaud started to play with hardware devices like USB Bit Whacker, a few lines of codes, his favorite server product and finally built this :

The OpenDS Weather Station, provides a dashboard of the important metrics from an OpenDS server, showing instantaneously how loaded is the server.
Arnaud already has 3 Stations in order (I and other members of our team want one for demo purpose), but I'm not sure he's ready to accept orders from other people and turn this into another business :)
Anyway, this is a nice little engineering project !

Technorati Tags: directory-server, engineering, java, ldap, opends

OpenDS 2.0 has been out for a couple of months now but the development team kept on the pace of development.

Beside its ability to manage remote OpenDS servers, the Control Panel has been enhanced to support the Recurrent Tasks introduced in the OpenDS 2.0 server, and both Export LDIF and Backup can be scheduled to happen at a later time or on a regular basis.

Notice the "Change" button in the Backup Options.

You can then choose the proper kind of scheduling and tune it very simply as illustrated below.

Technorati Tags: directory-server, java, ldap, opends, opensource

Up until now, to manage an OpenDS server, one would need to log onto the machine and starts the Control Panel.

In the next release of OpenDS (OpenDS 2.2), the Control Panel can now connect to remote servers, allowing an administrator to remotely monitor and tune any running instance of OpenDS.

Let's see what has changed in the Control Panel for the remote access, and what are the limitations.

The first thing you will notice when starting the Control Panel is a new dialog which allows you to choose between the local server or a remote server.

Once you've selected the server to administer, you will see the usual Control Panel window with its left action bar and information on the right.

You can change server while the Control Panel is running. It's in the File menu, when you are on the Main window of the Control Panel.

There is very little difference between managing a local server and managing a remote server.
One thing you will notice when administering a remote server is that you can't stop or restart it. Also, you cannot use the Control Panel to configure the Java properties of a remote server. That's it.

The Control Panel cannot be installed as a standalone tool, it's a part of the OpenDS server installation, and it can only manage one server at a time, local or remote. But the ability to manage remote servers will reduce the need to logon to each host and run the Control Panel on each instance either physically or using a remote display, simplifying the task of the directory administrators.

If you want to check this capability, you can download and install one of the recent OpenDS daily builds, or wait for next promoted build (2.1.0-build001).

Technorati Tags: directory-server, java, ldap, opends, opensource

And so do vacations, and blog silence.

I've been back in the office for over a week now but I was trying to catch up with emails, irc, blogs and news, too busy to find the time to blog again.
There's a lot to say on the LDAP and OpenDS front.

While I was happily riding the Mont Ventoux and around with friends and family, the project kept on moving on the path to OpenDS 2.2 and several new features have been committed by the team in the code repository:

• The Control Panel can now be used to manage remote server instances.
• OpenDS now publishes all changes in a public ChangeLog accessible (subject to access control) under the cn=changelog naming context.
• Replication now supports a Fractional mode allowing to exclude or include only specific attributes of all replicated entries.
• dsreplication utility has been improved to allow separating the replication service from the replicated OpenDS instance.
• The import feature has been rewritten and optimized, reducing the time and memory required to import very large set of data.
• The server now supports 2 new MatchingRules to better deal with Time and Dates (GeneralizedTime syntax).
• The server now supports the ability to declare a new syntax but default it's implementation to an existing one.
• The server now supports the ability to declare new Regular Expression based syntaxes and attributes.
• The server now supports the ability to declare new Enumeration based syntaxes and attributes.

Most of the new features are already documented as part of the User Documentation of the OpenDS documentation wiki. You can test these features in recent daily builds, or you can wait for the next promoted build (2.1.0-build001) that should come pretty soon.
I will be starting a series of articles to describe with illustrations and details those new features, in the coming days and weeks.

Also in a separated branch, Matt and Bo have been working on an LDAP Client API, which is getting in a good shape to be released for beta testing soon (probably along with OpenDS 2.2).

LDAPCon 2009
The 2nd. International conference on LDAP, LDAPCon 2009 will be held on September 20th and 21st at Waterfront Marriot Hotel , Portland OR, USA. If you haven't registered yet, please register now ! The registration fee includes access to the LinuxCon 2009 (Sep 21 - 23), and if you still need to be convinced that it's worth attending, you can check the agenda. I hope to see you there.

Also noticed in the blogosphere and the websphere :

• Mark Craig has posted a series of articles on LDAP programming, detailing LDAP Client APIs, giving LDAP programming best practices, explaining how to do basic LDAP search with Python, PHP and Java, but also how to secure the connection with TLS with Python, PHP and Java.
• Brad Diggs aka "The Zone Manager" posted on his blog an example script for simplifying OpenDS SMF management, for those who are using OpenDS zip distribution on Solaris or OpenSolaris (the IPS packaged version of OpenDS available in the pkg.opensolaris.org repository has support for SMF by default, but it's not the case for the OpenDS multiplatform version you can download or install directly from www.opends.org).
• An article posted a few months ago by Matt Wilson on Using OpenDS for DB2 authentication.
• Nicolas Frankel picks up OpenDS as the LDAP server component for a Development Infrastructure.

Finally I know the title of this post may have alarmed some of you. I don't know what's going to happen in the coming days, but I just hope I won't have to write another post with the same title on the subject of OpenDS or myself.

Technorati Tags: conference, developer, directory-server, ldap, ldapcon, opends, opensource

Another year has passed and we already end of July. Today is the anniversary day for the OpenDS project which is turning 3 this year.

As usual, this is also time to look back in the mirror and consider what we've achieved.

A little more than 10 days ago, we announced the availability of OpenDS 2.0, the new and stable release of our LDAPv3 directory server. OpenDS 2.0 came just about one year after OpenDS 1.0 and 6 months after OpenDS 1.2.
You can read about OpenDS 2.0 features in the Release Notes, but also in the various articles that have relayed our own announcement such as:

• Ben Rockwood: OpenDS 2.0 Released, also on TuxWire: the Linux blog.
• Java.net Editor's Daily Blog: OpenDS 2.0.0 Provides High-Performance Directory Services
• Marina Sum: OpenDS 2.0 ships, New Features in OpenDS 2.0

Yesterday, Sun publicly announced the general availability of Sun OpenDS Standard Edition 2.0, a Sun supported version of the OpenDS project, as well as the release of OpenSSO Express Build 8 (due in a couple of weeks).

Sun OpenDS Standard Edition 2.0 has the same features as OpenDS 2.0. Differences are in the branding, the license, the documentation that is available from docs.sun.com in HTML and PDF and of course the support services offered by Sun.
Mark Craig has already posted an illustrated article describing how easy it was to install Sun OpenDS Standard Edition 2.0 on Windows XP.

OpenSSO Express builds are supported snapshots of OpenSSO development. As Pat Patterson, Community Manager for OpenSSO and covering all Identity Products at Sun, detailed on his blog, OpenSSO Express Build 8 includes a new Mobile One Time Password Feature, the Fedlet for .Net and a new task flow enabling single sign-on to Salesforce.com.

As OpenDS is getting mature, we're seeing public endorsement and use of it. In the last couple of weeks, we had 2 success stories including the use of OpenDS :

• Gluu, a San Antonio TX based startup, offers Cloub base Identity Services based on OpenDS server and DSML gateway.
• Symeos, a French company, offers an Online Identity Management platform based on Sun open source solutions including Sun OpenDS Standard Edition.

Finaly within a year, the OpenDS Community has more than doubled, in term of members in the community, but as well in the number of active contributors and participants in the #opends IRC channel, and in term of unique visitors on the www.OpenDS.org.

I'm proud of what we've accomplished in 3 years and even more of the past year. We still have a lot of ideas and customers requirements to build in the OpenDS project. Overall we know where we want to go and we hope our new executives will agree that it's a nice and viable path to follow...

Technorati Tags: directory-server, enterprise, java, ldap, opends, opensource, opensso, software, Sun

There is an issue in the start and stop scripts that is preventing OpenDS 2.0 to be installed via Java Web Start on Mac OS X 10.5 with the latest version of the JVM (Update 4 a.k.a 1.6.0_13). I've discovered the problem at the same time we were releasing OpenDS 2.0.0 release candidate 4 which was planned to be the last release candidate. So the fix is not the release but has been committed to the trunk.

The issue is that the new JVM does use a larger default minimal heap size and reject any calls with -Xmx if the maximum heap size is smaller than its internal default (around 30MB).

Still OpenDS 2.0 can be installed on Mac OS X and used with the latest JVM, by downloading the Zip file, unzipping it and doing minor edition in the start-ds and stop-ds scripts.

$ unzip ~/Desktop/OpenDS-2.0.0.zip
Archive: /Users/ludo/Desktop/OpenDS-2.0.0.zip
creating: OpenDS-2.0.0/
...
inflating: OpenDS-2.0.0/upgrade
$ cd OpenDS-2.0.0/bin

In the start-ds and the stop-ds scripts, replace all occurences of the string "-Xms8M -Xmx8M" with "-client"

$ cp start-ds start-ds.orig
$ sed -e "s/-Xms8M -Xmx8M/-client/g" < start-ds.orig > start-ds
$ cp stop-ds stop-ds.orig
$ sed -e "s/-Xms8M -Xmx8M/-client/g" < stop-ds.orig > stop-ds

You can now run the setup program (or launch the QuickSetup application) to install and configure the OpenDS directory server.

Technorati Tags: directory-server, java, ldap, leopard, MacOSX, opends, opensource

OpenDS 2.0 has just been released and there are several new and exciting features in it.

To me, the biggest innovation in this release is "Assured Replication", an extension to the loose consistency multi-master replication feature that brings tighter consistency of data between replica. "Assured Replication" is not to be taken for a full synchronous and transactional replication mechanism. A change is not transactionally applied to a set of or all replicas of a topology. With "Assured Replication", the response to an LDAP modification is delayed until the change has been received or applied by other servers, in a best effort mode. It provides a greater assurance that a change is not lost even if the server receiving it crashes.

Assured Replication can function in 2 modes :

• Safe Data Mode: an update must be propagated to a defined number of Replication Servers before returning a response to the client. So if the server or the replication server is stopped, the data is still available to all other replicas.
• Safe Read Mode: an update must be propagated to all directory servers in the domain before the client is returned a response for the update.

Of course, for both modes, it's possible to configure a timeout interval to prevent LDAP clients to be waiting indefinitely if some servers are not available.

Configuring Assured Replication is pretty straightforward but cannot be done when setting up replication itself. So the first step is to configure Multi-Master Replication for a domain with dsreplication.

$ bin/dsreplication enable --host1 localhost --port1 5444 --bindDN1 'cn=directory manager' --bindPassword1 secret12 --replicationPort1 8989 --host2 localhost --port2 6444 --bindDN2 'cn=directory manager' --bindPassword2 secret12 --replicationPort2 8990 --adminUID admin --adminPassword secret12 --baseDN "dc=example,dc=com" -X -n

Establishing connections ..... Done.
Checking Registration information ..... Done.
Configuring Replication port on server localhost:5444 ..... Done.
Configuring Replication port on server localhost:6444 ..... Done.
Updating replication configuration for baseDN dc=example,dc=com on server localhost:5444 ..... Done.
Updating replication configuration for baseDN dc=example,dc=com on server localhost:6444 ..... Done.
Updating Registration configuration on server localhost:5444 ..... Done.
Updating Registration configuration on server localhost:6444 ..... Done.
Updating replication configuration for baseDN cn=schema on server localhost:5444 ..... Done.
Updating replication configuration for baseDN cn=schema on server localhost:6444 ..... Done.
Initializing Registration information on server localhost:6444 with the contents of server localhost:5444 ..... Done.
Initializing schema on server localhost:6444 with the contents of server localhost:5444 ..... Done.

Replication has been successfully enabled. Note that for replication to work you must initialize the contents of the base DN's that are being replicated (use dsreplication initialize to do so).

$ bin/dsreplication initialize --baseDN "dc=example,dc=com" --adminUID admin --adminPassword secret12 --hostSource localhost --portSource 5444 --hostDestination localhost --portDestination 6444 -X -n

Initializing base DN dc=example,dc=com with the contents from localhost:5444:
23 entries processed (100 % complete).
Base DN initialized successfully.

See
/var/folders/SH/SHFsRjymHtqiZ4GxPNZERU++Fwk/-Tmp-/opends-replication-737929812662715818.log
for a detailed log of this operation.

$ bin/dsreplication status -h localhost -p 5444 --adminUID admin --adminPassword secret12 -X

dc=example,dc=com - Replication Enabled
=======================================
Server : Entries : M.C. (1) : A.O.M.C. (2) : Port (3) : Security (4)
---------------:---------:----------:--------------:----------:-------------
localhost:5444 : 23 : 0 : N/A : 8989 : Disabled
localhost:6444 : 23 : 0 : N/A : 8990 : Disabled

Now that replication is setup, we can enable the Assured Replication mode, using the dsconfig utility. For this, on each of the OpenDS direcotry servers, we first need to retrieve the full name of the replication domain.

$ bin/dsconfig -D cn=directory\ manager -w secret12 -n -s list-replication-domains --provider-name "Multimaster Synchronization"

cn=admin data (domain 29167)
cn=schema (domain 9674)
dc=example,dc=com (domain 14741)

$ bin/dsconfig -D cn=directory\ manager -w secret12 -n set-replication-domain-prop --provider-name "Multimaster Synchronization" --domain-name "dc=example,dc=com (domain 14741)" --advanced --set assured-type:safe-data --set assured-sd-level:2

Note that the Replication Domain has a different value on each server, so you have to repeat these 2 commands on each instance.
Setting the assured level for Safe Data to 2 means that the server will make sure the data has been received by at least 2 replication services before returning to the LDAP client the response to the update request.

From a client point of view, there should be no difference, except that the server might take a little longer to return the response to an update request. In our measures, we found that the response time increased by 25% for Safe Data Level 2, which seems a lot, but honestly, when the response time is in the order of 2ms, it's hard to notice !

You can find more information about Assured Replication on OpenDS 2.0 documentation wiki, both in the overview of OpenDS Replication Architecture and the Replication Administration Guide, and more specifically Assured Replication Administration Guide

Technorati Tags: directory-server, java, ldap, opends, opensource, replication

This is a general LDAP tip and it applies to OpenDS the open source LDAP directory service in Java, as well as Sun Directory Server (all versions) and other LDAP servers:
How can I know the number of entries in a specific branch of the Directory Information Tree ?
Well it's simple. Every entry contains an operational attribute that specify the number of subordinates entry : numSubordinates.
So to retrieve the number of entries in a specific branch of the DIT, for example in the ou=people,dc=example,dc=com, a simple read is required.

$ bin/ldapsearch -p 3389 -D "cn=directory manager" -w - -b "ou=people,dc=example,dc=com" -s base '(objectclass=*)' numsubordinates

Password for user 'cn=directory manager':
dn: ou=People,dc=example,dc=com
numsubordinates: 21

This attribute is defined in an expired Internet-Draft but has been well implemented in many servers. There are often some limitations, like the value only counts entries on the same server, but overall it's a very useful attribute especially when browsing through the DIT.

OpenDS and Sun Directory Server also implements another attribute : hasSubordinates, defined in X.501. hasSubordinates is a boolean and returns "true" or "false" depending on whether the entry is a branch or a leaf in the Directory Information Tree.

Technorati Tags: directory-server, ldap, opends, opensource, tip

OpenDS 2.0 has just been released and there are several new and exciting features on it.

Today we will focus on one simple feature that greatly reduce cost of administration: scheduled tasks.

Being a Directory Server administrator often implies that you have to perform some administrative tasks on a regular basis. One of those tasks for example that an administrator has to do is a backup of the database. With most Directory Servers, the administrator would write a script to be run on a specific time of the day (or rather the night) that would proceed with the backup.
With OpenDS and the Recurrent Tasks, we've simplified this to the extreme: Just instruct OpenDS to do a backup on a weekly or daily basis, and as long as the server is running, it will execute the backup procedure at the desired time.

Here's how to schedule an hourly, compressed backup for the main back-end :

$ bin/backup -p 5444 -D cn=directory\ manager -w secret12 -n userRoot \
-d ./backups -c --recurringTask '0 * * * *'
Recurring Backup task BackupTask-dc89d98e-4ade-410e-ad19-325279af8f67
scheduled successfully

Now, just wait for the hour to pass, and check if the backup has been taken ;-)

The string passed as a parameter following the --recurringTask option has the same format as for the crontab(5) time/date: a 5 integer pattern field, separated by blank spaces: Minute (0-59), Hour (0-23), Day Of Month (1-31) Month Of Year (1-12) Day Of The Week (0-6 with 0 being Sunday).

The recurrent tasks are not limited to backups. They can be applied to all tasks, although some may not be that useful to everyone. Although I do see some use of a daily import of an LDIF file from a well know location, as a way to synchronize with external sources.

And of course, you can list the scheduled and recurrent tasks with dsconfig and cancel them if needed.

In the next release of OpenDS, you will be able to configure the recurrent tasks with the Control Panel. If you can't wait, you can try with the latest daily build.

You can find more information on recurrent tasks on the OpenDS Documentation Wiki.

Technorati Tags: directory-server, enterprise, java, ldap, opends, opensource

The OpenDS development team is very please to announce the availability of OpenDS 2.0.0 and it's supported companion Sun OpenDS Standard Edition 2.0.

OpenDS is an LDAPv3 compliant Directory Service written entirely in Java. The 2.0 release has many new features since OpenDS 1.0 that was released a year ago:
• A graphical control panel that enables basic server and data administration is available and replaces the OpenDS 1.0 status-panel
• An administration connector manages all administration related traffic to the server. By separating user operations and administration operations, the administration connector ensure a better quality of service and simplify logging and monitotring
• Connections can be secured and encrypted with SASL mechanisms
• Access Control mechanism has been enhanced to control access based on the level of security of the connection
• The ;binary transfert option is now supported
• Standard schema files related to Solaris and OpenSolaris LDAP naming services are provided by default
• Setup and tools provide an enhanced support for the JCEKS keystore and alternate security providers
• A new mode for Multi-Master Replication providing greater consistency and availability of data: Assured Replication
• Recurring tasks allow an administrator to schedule repeated tasks such as backups
• New extensible matching rules and indexing allowing comparing, ordering of data according to specific locales and languages
• Better monitoring information for the server and for Replication
• Full compliance with RFC 4518 and matching of UTF-8 in attributes with a DirectoryString syntax
• VLV indexes are now built during the Import
• Works with IBM JVM (Java 6 SR4 required)
• Works by default with JConsole and VisualVM when JMX Connection Handler is enabled
• Default settings and ergonomics have been improved reducing the need for tuning parts of the server
• Greatly improved performances and stability over time of those performances
• Resolved a possible security issue when Pre-ReadEntry, Post-ReadEntry and Assertion Controls were enabled

OpenDS 2.0.0 is a promotion of OpenDS 2.0.0 Release Candidate 4, built with revision 5492, to the stable and finalized version.
It can be installed with the Java WebStart QuickSetup or downloaded as a Zip file.
A DSML-to-LDAP Gateway is available as a War file.

Like for previous OpenDS releases, a snapshot of the documentation wiki has been setup. The documentation is still being verified and a few links might not be functional yet. We expect it to be finalized by the end of next week.

You can find more information about OpenDS 2.0 in the release notes.
For a supported version of OpenDS, please check the Sun OpenDS Standard Edition 2.0 home page or get it directly from Sun Download Center.

I'd like to address a special thank to our external contributors who have helped making this release a better release, especially Christian Brennsteiner for the German translation of messages, Tosiki Iga for the Japanese translation, D.J Hagberg for the performance enhancements, Andy Wang for the IBM JVM Support.
Thanks also to all users who have raised issues during the development phase, helping us with testing the server in ways we can't.

This is a major milestone for the OpenDS project, but there is more to come... Make sure you check the Roadmap and you participate to it.

Technorati Tags: directory-server, java, ldap, opends, Sun

Pavel Heimlich, also known as Hajma on in the OpenDS project and lead for many Translation projects, has gone through all of the OpenDS messages to figure out the ones that were still in use and important to translate. There is now a "simplified" OpenDS project in the Community Translation Interface that contains a 5th of the initial messages, making it easier and faster for the volunteers to translate OpenDS to their preferred language. There are currently on-going translation for chinese, french, german, japanese, korean, polish, portuguese, serbian and spanish, but new language projects can be initiated on demand.
If you're interested, check the How To Guide.

Technorati Tags: directory-server, java, ldap, localization, opends, opensource

It all started today by a conversation with a colleague on our long experience with LDAP and Directory Services...

I told him that I've started my carrier as a developer in the X.400 domain. In my first job, for a French startup called E3X, between 1991 and 1995, I've wrote 3 different versions of a P7 Message Store for the UCOM.X400 product line. Along the same dates, I've also been involved a little bit with X.500. One of the things that I've done, was using our UCOM.X500 product to store information about some restaurants in the Sophia-Antipolis area, so that we could search and choose one whenever we had visitors coming. The data included beside the usual address and phone number, the type of food, opening hours, whether reservation was necessary and so on...

The schema defined eventually got cleaned up and published as an internet draft by my manager at that time, Dr. Alain Zahm. You can find a summary of this internet draft at the very end of this page: http://choices.cs.uiuc.edu/uChoices/Papers/Proposals/92.MobileComputing/INDEX.
Minutes of IETF OSI-DS meeting in November 1992 also shows that the schema was discussed.
Now that all public and research X.500 servers have been stopped and decommissioned, there is no trace of this anymore. Google is too young to have references to this, and so is Yahoo. But I do remember that in the mid 90ies, whenever I was searching for my name, most of the results coming back were associated with some little known restaurants on the French Riviera !

In 1995, I joined Sun to work on the Solstice X.400 product and a year later, with I've started working on University of Michigan slapd code to produce Sun Directory Services 1.0, released in September 1997... the rest is history :-)

Technorati Tags: directory-server, ldap, Sun

Many of you have requested the slides.
Here they are :

• Scaling the Identity Store with OpenDS
• GC Tuning In the HotSpot Java Virtual Machine

Thanks for your presence...
A more detailed article is in the works.

Technorati Tags: conference, fisl, java, opends, opensource, performance