The momentum behind the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol increased yesterday with the announcement of support from more than 40 vendors and the unveiling of version 3.0 of Netscape Communications Corp’s Directory Server, ahead of LDAP’s own version 3.0 specification, which is due to be ratified in August. All of the other 47 vendors promised products, and the list contained no real surprises, including Novell Inc, Hewlett- Packard, IBM Corp, Informix Software Inc, Oracle Corp, but no Microsoft Corp. Netscape Directory Server enables corporations to build global directories and manage across applications, workgroups and languages from a single point, regardless of whether they are on an intranet, extranet or the internet. In the announcement Netscape was at pains to point out that the draft LDAP V3 is not due to be ratified until an IETF Internet Engineering Task Force meeting in Munich in August, perhaps remembering that back in March IBM Lotus got very hot under the collar and fired off an angry letter chastising Netscape for claiming shipping support for a protocol that didn’t really exist and whose preliminary specifications had been all but thrown out the window (CI No 3,113). Mind you it’s not shipping just yet: Netscape Directory Server 3.0 goes into beta next week and is expected to ship next quarter on Windows NT and most Unix flavors for $1,000.
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