Virtual Identity Dialogue

This week is a historic personal moment for me. This week roughly marks 10 years from when I was first introduced to LDAP.



Well introduced is really TOO kind - it was more like - "Hey Mark,
welcome to your new (and actually your first professional) job -- could
you go look at this LDAP thing?". How little did I know how "taking a
look" would turn into a good chunk of my life's work. :)



And now that we've finally released to the world the Identity Governance Framework proposal - this could be the first step of what I'll spend the next 10 years on :).

Someone recently asked me "Does Virtual Directory work with .NET
applications?" and so I thought I would share the answer in the blog.



The answer:

1 - Yes under most circumstances, .NET-based applications do work with OVD

2 - This does not mean all Microsoft developed applications work with
OVD (or any other non-Active Directory LDAP servers including ADAM).
For example Windows desktop logins require AD. Older versions of
Sharepoint require AD (though based on my own reading of Sharepoint 2007 public docs,
there does seem to be a trickle of hope that you won't be restricted to
AD).

3 - You may need to include the AD schema in OVD configuration settings
depending on your .NET application requirements. We ship with the
schema files out of the box, but you do need to enable them. See the
product documentation or consult support if you need assistance. We
don't enable the schema OTB because most applications don't need it.

Our own Quan Dinh and Clayton Donley have written a new article on Linux PAM Authentication with LDAP for Enterprise Open Source Magazine.



This article was inspired by the workd Quan did in enabling PAM
authentication for internal Oracle Linux systems to use our internal
OID deployment.

One of the things I've been banging my head sensly into a brick wall --
oops, I mean "learning" - has been Google Web Toolkit aka GWT.



GWT is a rather interesting concept - the ability to write dynamic web
pages (aka AJAX) using standard Java syntax. Behind the scenes it gets
compiled into Javascript and saves Polar Bears from drowning in the
artic. Or maybe it compiles Polar Bears and saves Javascript?



Anyway - it is a nifty concept and something I have been wanting to play around with for a while.



So, down the rabit hole I went. And I got stuck with a mysterious Java
error about something silly I had done in regards to building my RPC
code.



So off to Google - I went and stumbled onto this article. I couldn't believe it - here I was thinking I was breaking new ground -- using GWT with Jdeveloper!



But no, I'm a bit late to the party :).



So I'll try the article and see how it goes.



Or rather maybe it's time to go eat some Peppermint ice cream
(specifically Blue Bell Peppermint, because since this week is new
year's, it will be gone from the shelves soon) and call it a night.