HP UX Direry Server manual Directory design examples, Design example a local enterprise

9 Directory design examples

The design the directory service depends on the size and nature of the enterprise. This chapter provides a couple of examples of how a directory can be applied within a variety of different settings. These examples are a starting point for developing a real-life directory service deployment plan.

9.1 Design example: A local enterprise

Example Corp., an automobile parts manufacturer, is a small company that consists of 500 employees. Example Corp. decides to deploy HP-UX Directory Server to support the directory-enabled applications it uses.

9.1.1 Local enterprise data design

Example Corp. first decides the type of data it will store in the directory. To do this, Example Corp. creates a deployment team that performs a site survey to determine how the directory will be used. The deployment team determines the following:

•Example Corp.'s directory will be used by a messaging server, a web server, a calendar server, a human resources application, and a white pages application.

•The messaging server performs exact searches on attributes such as uid, mailServerName, and mailAddress. To improve database performance, Example Corp. will maintain indexes for these attributes to support searches by the messaging server.

For more information on using indexes, see “Using indexes to improve database performance”.

•The white pages application frequently searches for user names and phone numbers. The directory therefore needs to be capable of frequent substring, wildcard, and fuzzy searches, which return large sets of results. Example Corp. decides to maintain presence, equality, approximate, and substring indexes for the cn, sn, and givenName attributes and presence, equality, and substring indexes for the telephoneNumber attribute.

•Example Corp.'s directory maintains user and group information to support an LDAP server-based intranet deployed throughout the organization. Most of Example Corp.'s user and group information will be centrally managed by a group of directory administrators. However, Example Corp. also wants email information to be managed by a separate group of mail administrators.

•Example Corp. plans to support public key infrastructure (PKI) applications in the future, such as S/MIME email, so it needs to be prepared to store users' public key certificates in the directory.

9.1.2Local enterprise schema design

Example Corp.'s deployment team decides to use the inetOrgPerson object class to represent the entries in the directory. This object class is appealing because it allows the userCertificate and uid (userID) attributes, both of which are needed by the applications supported by Example Corp.'s directory.

Example Corp. also wants to customize the default directory schema. Example Corp. creates the examplePerson object class to represent employees of Example Corp. It derives this object class from the inetOrgPerson object class.

The examplePerson object class allows one attribute, the exampleID attribute. This attribute contains the special employee number assigned to each Example Corp. employee.

In the future, Example Corp. can add new attributes to the examplePerson object class as needed.

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