Alistair’s cakeBlog

I’ve got a meeting next week to discuss the replacement of the account creation system I developed about 6 years ago and which has been running continuously since then. The plan is to replace it with Novell Identity Manager and use DirXML to hook up the various systems that the current system provisions. At the moment the system links SITS to Novell NDS via LDAP (accounts) and NDAP (home directories) and Groupwise via COM. So how does all that translate into IdM lingo? The following diagram gives an overview of how IdM/DirXML interact with external systems:

Basically, someone defines the business rules, with designer for help, which link up various drivers to provision external systems based on what’s happening in other external systems. I expect someone with pointy hair will work on the rules while we’re meeting to discuss whether we contract out the development, which can be either Java or C++, or do it inhouse. The latter would be the better option, for obvious reasons!