About This Guide


The iPlanet Meta-Directory Deployment Guide offers an introduction to iPlanet Meta-Directory and describes how to plan and implement an iPlanet Meta-Directory system.

This preface contains the following sections:

• What You Are Expected to Know

• The iPlanet Meta-Directory Documentation Set

• Organization of This Guide

• Documentation Conventions

• Related Information

What You Are Expected to Know

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This book is considered the "first" book in the documentation series provided with iPlanet^TM Meta-Directory. While it's not essential that you understand directory technologies, you will get the most out of this guide if you are familiar with directory servers, databases, and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). Particularly, you should be familiar with iPlanet Directory Server and the documentation provided with that product.

This guide is intended for use by IT professionals who want to join different directory repositories into one unified view. The functionality contained in iPlanet Meta-Directory allows you to join the different directory information your organization maintains, thus making it easier to view and maintain the information you have spread across different directory and database applications.

Once you understand the concepts described in this guide, you will be ready to install, configure, and administer an iPlanet Meta-Directory system, as described in the iPlanet Meta-Directory Installation Guide and the iPlanet Meta-Directory Configuration and Administration Guide.

The iPlanet Meta-Directory Documentation Set

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The iPlanet Meta-Directory version 5.0 documentation set contains the following titles:

• iPlanet Meta-Directory Deployment Guide (this guide) describes iPlanet Meta-Directory and details how to plan and implement a Meta-Directory system.

• iPlanet Meta-Directory Installation Guide gives instructions on how to install the iPlanet Meta-Directory software on both Solaris and Windows NT systems.

• iPlanet Meta-Directory Configuration and Administration Guide documents how to configure and administer an iPlanet Meta-Directory system once it has been installed. Configuring and administering Meta-Directory from both the Meta-Directory console and the command line are addressed.

• The Release Notes file gathers an assortment of information, including a description of what is new in this release, last minute installation notes, known problems and limitations, and how to report problems.

  
  

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  Note	Be sure to check the Meta-Directory documentation web site for updates to the release notes and for revisions to the guides. Updated documents will be marked with the revision date. http://docs.iplanet.com/docs/manuals/metadir.html

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Organization of This Guide

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Table 1 describes the organization of this book:

Table 1    Layout of This Manual  

Chapter Title	Chapter Description
"About This Guide"	The chapter you are reading, it gives an outline of this guide and describes the iPlanet Meta-Directory documentation set. It also provides sources for additional information related to iPlanet Meta-Directory.
Chapter 1 "Meta-Directory Concepts"	This chapter provides a high-level overview that describes the need for iPlanet Meta-Directory, the components provided with the software package, and the features provided by the components.
Chapter 2 "Planning the Meta-Directory System"	This chapter describes planning your Meta-Directory system. The three phases of planning are described: designing, deploying, and maintaining the system. This includes planning the topology of servers, the structuring of data, server load balancing, and so on.
Chapter 3 "Directory Server Configuration Settings for Meta-Directory"	This chapter discusses configuring the iPlanet Meta-Directory system (as opposed to configuring the component instances which you instantiate, which is discussed in the iPlanet Meta-Directory Configuration and Administration Guide). Included in this chapter are the steps that need to be taken to configure iPlanet Directory Server so that it can correctly support Meta-Directory, the schemas that need to be installed, enabling the Directory Server change log, and so on.
Chapter 4 "Meta-Directory Performance Tuning"	This chapter discusses some of the approaches you can take to increase the performance of Directory Server with regards to how it interacts with iPlanet Meta-Directory.
Chapter 5 "Tuning Directory Server"	This chapter provides a guide to the important iPlanet Directory Server settings a that can effect the performance of iPlanet Meta-Directory.

Documentation Conventions

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In the iPlanet Meta-Directory documentation (such as this guide) there are certain typographic and terminology conventions used to simplify discussion and to help you better understand the material. These conventions are described below.

Typographic Conventions

This book uses the following typographic conventions:

• Italic type is used within text for book titles, new terminology, emphasis, and words used in the literal sense.

• Monospace font is used for sample code and code listings, API and language elements (such as function names and class names), filenames, pathnames, directory names, HTML tags, and any text that must be typed on the screen.

• Italic serif font is used within code and code fragments to indicate variable placeholders. For example, the following command uses filename as a variable placeholder for an argument to the gunzip command:

    gunzip -d filename.tar.gz

Terminology

Below is a list of the general terms that are used in the iPlanet Meta-Directory documentation set:

• Meta-Directory refers to iPlanet Meta-Directory and any installed instances of the iPlanet Meta-Directory software.

• Meta-Directory components refers to the collective set of iPlanet Meta-Directory components and software you have installed and running on your system, including the join engine and any connectors.

• External data source refers to any user data that originates outside of the core Meta-Directory components, whether the data is coming from another database, directory server, data file, or other source of data.

• Directory Server refers to an installed instance of iPlanet Directory Server or Netscape^TM Directory Server.

  iPlanet Meta-Directory can synchronize data using any LDAPv2 and LDAPv3-compliant directory server, as long as the LDAP server supports a change log mechanism similar to the one implemented in Netscape Directory Server 4.1x. The term Directory Server refers to the instances of iPlanet Directory Server and Netscape Directory Server that you have installed to work with iPlanet Meta-Directory.

• Similarly the term Administration Server refers to an installed instance of Netscape Administration Server or iPlanet Administration Server, whether it be used with the Meta-Directory components or another Netscape or iPlanet server.

• NETSITE_ROOT is a variable placeholder for the home directory where you have installed iPlanet Meta-Directory and any other iPlanet servers installed into the same server group.

• The term flow is used rather loosely to refer to the process of synchronizing data between an external data source and the meta view. You "flow" data through a connector to the connector view and then "flow" it to the meta view. The contrary is also true; you "flow" data from the meta view back to the connector views and out to the external data sources.

Related Information

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In addition to the documentation provided with iPlanet Meta-Directory, you should be familiar with several other sets of documentation. Of particular interest are the iPlanet Console and iPlanet Directory Server documentation sets.

This sections lists additional sources of information that can be used with iPlanet Meta-Directory.

iPlanet Console Documentation
You can find the iPlanet Console documentation at the following site:

http://docs.iplanet.com/docs/manuals/console.html

iPlanet Directory Server Documentation
You can find the iPlanet Directory Server documentation at the following site:

http://docs.iplanet.com/docs/manuals/directory.html

Directory Server Developer Information
In addition to the Directory Server documentation, you can find information on Meta-Directory, LDAP, the iPlanet Directory Server, and associated technologies at the following iPlanet developer sites:

http://developer.iplanet.com/tech/directory/

http://www.iplanet.com/downloads/developer/

Other iPlanet Product Documentation
Documentation for all iPlanet and Netscape servers and technologies can be found at the following web site:

http://docs.iplanet.com/docs/manuals/

iPlanet Technical Support
You can contact iPlanet Technical Support through the following location:

http://www.iplanet.com/support/