What is it?
Before going into all the details here's what the Apache Directory
Server looks like from an architectural perspective.
Our Vision
Our primary vision (others also outlined below) is to build an
enterprise directory server platform (and its components) where
other Internet services snap in to store their data within the
directory so they may be managed using LDAP. From the image
above you'll see the architecture is designed so services besides
LDAP like DNS, DHCP, SLP and Kerberos will snap in. Other services
like UDDI can also be implemented and snapped in. These services
will use a common networking layer and each can be toggled on and
off according to the needs of the environment. apseda, mina, or
sedang are various frameworks used for the common network layer.
These services share the common network layer and back their data
within the Apache Directory Server's backing stores without any
network latency or going through the LDAP line protocol. NTP btw
is the only exception and it's there to remedy the need for time
sync for replication and other time sensitive protocols like kerberos.
Its implementation here is intended to prevent any dependency on
external infrastructure.
Other aspects to our vision include becoming the JNDI goto project and
also becoming the one stop shop for all directory and naming concerns
here at the ASF. These concerns may be outside of the scope of JNDI
or may not even fall under Java.
