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CIO Corner ArticlesBoundaryless Information Flow is Real and RelevantBoundaryless Information Flow to Manage Our SafetyEA, Business Agility, and Boundaryless Information FlowEnterprise Architecture: Return on InvestmentDeciding on Open SourceManaging the FlowCertification - A Part of a Virtuous CircleDirectories - If There Were No Directories I Couldn't Find ITBoundaryless Information Flow & Enterprise ArchitectureThinking Strategically about Certified ProductsArchitecture: Make IT Work for YouOpen Source and StandardsArchitecture: An Essential Tool for the CIOWhat Keeps CIO Awake |
You are here: The Open Group > CIODirectories - If There Were No Directories I Couldn't Find ITAccording to "whatis.com" a directory "is, in general, an approach to organizing information, the most familiar example being a telephone directory." What this definition doesn't emphasize is why this is so important, maybe that's because it is obvious to everyone that the reason directories are so important is so we can find stuff. Directories help me find phone numbers, directories help me find addresses of businesses, and directories help me find certified public accountants. Where would we be without a telephone directory? How would I find a telephone number? You have to admit that life would be much more difficult without the old white and yellow pages. My problem is that even though I live in a smaller community I now have 8 telephone directories! I need a directory of my telephone directories! This is where directory services come in; when things are too complicated it is easier to access a directory service that helps us wade through all the directories. For my telephone situation I call 411. As our experiences demonstrate it isn't easy using telephone directories to find phone numbers and addresses of people and business anywhere in the country, let alone the world. Not only do you need the directory information you need the directory service to get to the information. So in the real world the problem can be appreciated and we're talking about phone numbers and addresses for a relatively small number of objects, people and address. About 6.3 billion people, and I don't know how many different addresses there are, but let’s assume 10 times the population: 63 billion. OK 63 billion isn't a small number, but it is when compared to what is addressed in the Information Technology industry. Today our addressing scheme, which is running out of space, can accommodate about 4 billion computer devices that may need to be found. Think about it; any one computer that can have thousands of files that may need to be found. That alone gets you to 4 trillion. Then when you add up users and services you end up with a number more than 4 trillion. So in the Information Technology industry we have lots of stuff to find and we have lots of directories.
As important as directories are one would think that standard approaches to directories would be commonplace in implementation. We had "ISO X.500!" But for many reasons, e.g. performance, X.500 was not ubiquitously supported. Poor performance claims were a primary motivator for an alternative to X.500's Directory Access Protocol, or descendant, to X.500 DAP, called Lightweight Directory Access Protocol - LDAP. This standard seems to be taking hold as it is used in network operating systems, systems management applications, email and web clients, and applications from major software providers. It is a good thing, we don't need 1000 different ways to access directories. But to keep it going buyers need to specify that they will prefer products that are certified to conform to the LDAP standards! We could not "process" without directories and directory services, like we couldn't communicate without telephone directories and directory services. Within The Open Group we have a group of members that are very interested in Directories called the Directory Interoperability Forum. Here these people are working amongst themselves and with other organizations like the DMTF to maximize the usefulness of directories. By the way, IP v.6 supports about 340 undecillion addresses. That's a very big number. If you use the Internet to find out how big an undecillion is, you'll be accessing a lot of directories.
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