Customer Reviews

LDAP Programming with Java™

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is a truly excellent book, and the only poor reviews center around it's lack of JNDI coverage, which I find unfortunate. Nowhere does the book infer that it is going to cover jndi, this is the assumption of a buyer who equates the word "java" in the title with jndi. Most people who use jndi (myself included) do so to access an ldap server, so to learn jndi is a bit of an overkill. What most people don't know is that netscape's directory SDK for java will port to any ldap version 3 compliant server (and most version 2's), so although it isn't standardized like jndi, it is portable. p38 "The LDAP SDK provides communications and data handling to any LDAP compliant directory service" p51 "Other LDAP servers that comply with LDAP version 3 will also work with the code and examples in this book, and much of the code will also work with servers that support only LDAP version 2". You'll never find a clearer book on ldap, so don't let the jndi confusion throw you.

Java has a directory API called JNDI. This book no more than acknowledge its existence. This book discusses LDAP and Netscape's Directory SDK. The author's mention that the book only covers Directory SDK. They don't provide any information on the differences between JNDI and Directory SDK, how the two can be used together or why they focused exclusively on the Directory SDK. What an oversight! The title is misleading. It should be: 'LDAP and Netscape's Java Directory API'.

Well written book, but based on the author's proprietary API and not JNDI which is the modern approach, thus it's rather dated, hence the discount to 3 stars. The URL and other data still applies, but for actual Java code examples I liked Wilcox "Implementing LDAP" even though it isn't Java-centric. I look forward to the O'Reilly LDAP book to see what it's like.

In my opinion the title is misleading! This book is about the proprietary Netscape SDK. And probably this is a great book about... Netscape LDAP SDK. If you wish to use JNDI instead of Netscape SDK, then the book is almost useless. It's amazing that the book contains maybe one reference about JNDI.

Too bad that such talented authors have decided to write this book based on Netscape SDK and not on JNDI like they should have. The book really gives a wrong impression on how to code with Java & LDAP and causes major vendor-lock. Maybe all this was was the plan in the first place when this book was written, since both of the authors are from Netscape, Weltman being a designer of the Netscape LDAP SDK and Dahlbura a lead engineer specializing in LDAP implementation and planning.

Focusing solely on Netscape's Directory SDK with the Netscape Directory Server, a more appropriate title would have been Netscape Directory Server via the Netscape Java Directory SDK.

If you are not working with these specific tools, this book will be useless to you.

I think that this book is fairly good and helpful for LDAP and Java. It gives easy description.
Especially, this help me to develope other application using the source code of this book. However, one short point is to be limited to Netscape Server Suite. I would like to say thanks to authors.

Regards,

Incheon Paik

This book is ahead of the pack in available LDAP books. This book concentrate mostly on Netscape Directory Server but you can apply this to any LDAP comaptible Servers (NDS from Novell, Inc.). This book is worth every penny and you will appreciate the purchase.

I was looking for a book to help me with my website's authentication project and its use of LDAP and this book helped me more than the rest. It gave me great code examples, great insights on directory design and an excellent understanding of how to get my job done.

I was at first a little concerned about the lack of coverage on JNDI, but then I realized it's not important to most LDAP/Java projects and it's also widely covered elsewhere. These guys zero in and missle lock on LDAP and Java and really help the reader with those 2 technologies.

I really hope to they put out more texts like this soon on other technologies and information technology strategies. I would guess that other aspects of web applications and web architectures would be well covered by these authors and applicable to me and my highly trafficed website.

If you're like me and learn best by example, this book is perfect.

From secure applets to an extensive phone book servlet - from LDAP in JavaScript to LDAP Java Beans; this book contains a seemingly inexhaustable collection of sample code that not only teaches you how to use the SDK, but stimulates your creative juices while doing so.