A directory service provides a place to store information about network-based resources, such as applications, files, printers, and people—although LDAP Quickstart Manager deals only with people and their attributes. The directory service provides a consistent way to name, describe, locate, access, manage, and secure information about these resources. A directory service helps an organization define and maintain its network infrastructure, perform system administration, and control the users’ experience of its information systems.
Both Caliber and StarTeam Server can use directory services (either Microsoft Active Directory or OpenLDAP) to perform password authorization. As users log on, they enter their product user names and their directory service passwords. Before allowing the users to access the server, the users then check a directory service for valid passwords.
For Caliber, all directory service configuration is done via the , via the Directory Services tab. See online help in Caliber for more information.
To set up directory service authentication in StarTeam Server, you must set options on the Directory Service tab of the Server Administration tool. These options enable directory service support and provide information about accessing the service. In addition, individual users cannot use this feature until their accounts are set up for directory service validation. You can use either StarTeam Server’s User Manager or LDAP Quickstart Manager for this purpose. See the StarTeam Server Administrator’s Guide for more information about the Server Configuration dialog and User Manager.
The distinguished name (DN), a unique identifier, is used by Micro Focus servers as they communicate with the directory service. Caliber and StarTeam Server must send each user’s distinguished name (DN) to the directory service in order to verify the user’s password. DNs can be long and not very intuitive. Also, some organizations change DNs occasionally, and updating these changes by hand can be very tedious. LDAP QuickStart Manager makes it easy to maintain the DNs and other directory service information that you choose to store in Caliber and StarTeam Server .