ABSTRACT
UNTIL RECENTLY, THE USE OF NETWORK DIRECTORY SERVICE WAS LIMITED to facilitating file and print service operations. As networks grew in complexity, it was realized that the role of a network directory service could be expanded to enhance user operations by providing access to other objects within a network, such as different applications, workgroups, and even other uses. Recognizing the need to expand and enhance their network directory services, Novell and Microsoft have introduced a series of products over the past few years that considerably facilitated access to network resources. Novell was first to the market, introducing its Novell Directory Service (NDS) with NetWare 4.0 several years ago. Since then, Novell has upgraded the capabilities of its NDS through a series of new versions of their directory service, while Microsoft, until recently, was literally left in the dust with an eventually obsolete directory structure based on the relationship between domains in an NT network. With the release of Windows NT 5.0, Microsoft is back in the network directory services competition. Its Active Directory is quite similar to NDS with respect to supporting a hierarchical inverted tree structure, and its new product can be expected to satisfy a large number of Windows NT accounts that were quite vocal in asking for an enhanced directory service capability.
