Reply to Dave Kearns, re: Novell Virtual Directory Services
For some reason, emails to Cap’n Dave Kearns have been bouncing back to me as undeliverable. Since Dave sometimes reads this blog, I post is my brief response to his recent newsletter entry “Why Novell Virtual Directory Services is a good idea,” for which I could not find a an online link yet, so I posted the text further below. [Update 24Aug05: I added direct link to Dave's article now that it is online.]
Dave:
The funny thing about most Virtual Directory vendors is that they claim to not use another store. Most do. When you dig into RadiantLogic, for example, it uses a relational database underneath (at least, it did back when I was over NVDS, then still codenamed “Kepler”).
However, There are still plenty of valid arguments against NVDS legitimately being a “virtual directory”–virtual directories are generally understood to have a very different use and functionality from what NVDS does. But for me, the data store argument is probably not the best angle on this, since the VD (egad, is that really the abbreviation?) vendors mostly just obfuscate the fact that they do in fact use a data store.
–Ted
Evidently it’s not only Chinese firewalls that block you!
you can use dkearns AT gmail.com (but don’t tell anyone I let you know about this!)
And, yes, real Virtual Directory systems do use data stores - but they don’t store real ID data in them. RAdiant One is different in that it’s a vitual front-end and a metadirectory back end. A category all it’s own!
-dave
Comment by Dave — August 21, 2005 @ 12:51 pm
Your secret’s well kept with me and the other 5 readers here, Dave!
Comment by Rev — August 21, 2005 @ 11:58 pm
I recently joined Maxware and haven’t had the opportunity to get under the hood yet of the Maxware VD, but my understanding is that there’s no underlying data store. It seems to be truly virtual. Since there are only a few players (Oracle, Radiant) and Ted wrote “most virtual directory vendors“, I thought it worth mentioning.
Also - Dave, you wrote “real Virtual Directory systems do use data stores “. Would you be able to expand that thought? I appreciate your insight and I’m a loyal reader. Thanks
Comment by Matt Flynn — February 7, 2006 @ 3:48 pm