A comprehensive treatment of the features and methods of deployment for the lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) is provided in this book. One of the advantages of the book is its vendor-independent examination of the protocol.

The presentation is separated into nine chapters. Each chapter covers a particular topic in its entirety, so readers may pick and choose chapters according to their interest and skill level.

In the first chapter, the author presents a review of some basic directory service concepts. The review begins with a (thankfully short) account of relevant protocols and standards, and quickly proceeds to a description of LDAP. The material covered may seem elementary to the seasoned system administrator with extensive network yellow pages (YP) or network information service (NIS, NIS+) experience, but it may be invaluable reading for those with minimal or no exposure to such topics. Chapter 2 is a crash course in the real-world operation of LDAP servers, with screen shots and command output. This chapter seems out of place in the book, especially since it precedes chapter 3, which covers the theory behind the protocol.

The next three chapters are very well written, and cover LDAP-specific services, components, and operations, such as the search process and search filters, directory replication and partitioning, and the LDAP application programming interfaces (APIs).

The chapter “LDAP Directory Server Administration” is a welcome break in the flow of the book. Following coverage of the basics, the theory, and LDAP features, the author now addresses the actual administration tasks of an LDAP server. For the seasoned administrator, this chapter is probably the core of the book. It contains a lot of the information and description required to administer the typical available facilities. Finally, the last two chapters address the integration and Web enabling of LDAP in Unix environments, and the design of LDAP servers.

The book manages to combine the down-to-earth information required for anyone to master the deployment of LDAP services, and the theoretical concepts behind the protocol. It is obvious from the detailed examples and the thorough treatment of each subject that the author has paid a great deal of attention to detail.

Overall, some of the best features of the book are the well-organized chapter layout, the thorough index, and the easy-to-read typography. The physical layout features many screen shots alongside the various examples. The book undoubtedly fulfills its purpose as a good how-to guide for the deployment of LDAP servers and services.