Deepak's Weblog

Its quite a some time now when I had started thinking about blogging. Blogging, the word, made me think how and from where can I start? Talking about me or simply talking about my product I'm working on, discussing the features and getting in the details were the thoughts that kept me from start blogging.

So today is the fine day to start with. Here is brief what I'm currently doing.

What is DSEE

I'm working on a product called Directory Server Enterprise Edition. Not jumping into the details of the product. While thinking about Directory Server Enterprise Edition, the very first thing that comes in my mind is a server or set of servers that holds the directory information. What is the Directory information? As Mark mentioned in his blog http://blogs.sun.com/marginNotes/, talking about telephone directory, it stores limited information about the people and their telephone numbers. A directory server is a directory can store as much information as we want it to store.

Storing and retrieving

Storing information is one side of the coin and reteriving information accurately and quickly is another. Take an example of a big enterprise, where millions of enteris of data are stored and used over the period of time. Data availability is the other requirement that comes in mind when we simply think about using such a system. Data availability means replication of data in case of server crashes, timely backup and restore mechanism and many more.

Is there any security to the data we store?

Yes, of course, security to your data is the utmost requirement. How can Engineers forget that. DSEE uses a secure system to store your data that protects any type of unauthenticated access to your data.

Is there any way to store diff types of data on diff. servers?

Next question that came to my mind was what if I need to store different types of data on different servers and then use the data as and when required. Thanks to the team working on DSEE that they provided us with the concept of data distribution. We are not going into the details here. Will talk about it later in details.

Can I join my directory to another to use data

One day, sitting in front of my computer, I was just thinking if I need to use the data from the directory that is not in the format in which our DS is. Do we have any mechanism that we can use the information in that directory. Answer is yes. We've a mechanism called virtualization. It lets us to join multiple data sources such as LDAP and JDBC.

Isnt it so difficult for me to remember what information is stored on which server?

No. Directory Proxy Server simply hides all the details and let people concentrate on their work rather than to remember storage information. Once the system is configured and then if you request for some information, the process is totally hidden and it provides required results. The system can use multiple servers to reterieve the information that depends on how I configure my system. Will talk about it in more details in coming days.

There are many more features in store for us. I'll get back to you soon with some more features without going into technical details.

Stay Tuned...