LDAP with TOMCAT and ECLIPSE Development Environment

In my continuing work to find a decent and scalable web deployment system.  I've been drawn to the "dark side" of using Java where everyone else seems to be gravitating toward javascript...what?!! really!!?  I see javascript as a UI tool but for serious back end? really? V8?  node.js? are you serious? Let's get serious now, Java will rule in the web-verse back end even with every US government agency attempting to boost Apple's share value by attempting to cast the same dispersion on Java that it did on Flash.  Where did that leave the advertising industry?  It is left with an HTML5 specification that is still not complete and a toolset that is reminiscent of the capabilities of Visual Basic back in the 1990's.  Well, they can afford to pay Homeland Security and all the other government agencies off (sorry the conspiriacy guy needs to come out to play as usual), but java still rules in my books and they won't be able to buy me out because I'm not really for sale, regardless.  If we want to step back to the 90's level of coding technology we can use javascript, the tools for quality and debugging are back there, we have Google's tools in their chrome browser and Firefox with firebug, I'll admit there are a couple of good tools but none that cross platform boundaries like Java does nor has the scope and depth of Java libraries.  There's no ECLIPSE IDE for javascript for example, but I diverge..

I wanted to simply list a few pages to remember regarding the development using LDAP for a java back end web system.  Simply, here are a couple of pages that describe the LDAP authentication and user management powerhouse capabilities.  LDAP will scale in a serious way, everything you can imagine for a user management system and then some can be accomplished with LDAP and , by the way, you only have to do your user management once if you want to attach other systems to it, go right ahead, even Windows or Linux OS can authenticate against your LDAP. I mean how many user databases do you need?. I say you only need one! So what are you waiting for?  Figure out what LDAP is.

Here's some tips on how to build LDAP into your tomcat server.  Oh, what's a Tomcat server?  Well, I'll leave that for you to discover for yourself as well if you don't already know, every bad thing about Java runtime configuration was made solid with OSGI, ohh you don't understand what OSGI is?  Ohhh.. you must be programming an Iphone, of course you wouldn't understand, well the number one phone platform for Apps is Google's Android, and it's open source!  By the way, OSGI is the underpinning of how an Android works, and it is a standard developed for Java!  Ohhh you see the connection between my previous statement about Apple paying off the US government to discredit Java, can you connect the dots?  But I diverge again...


Just in case you thought that Java was dead and the Feds came and killed it after peeing on it, I'll remind you that every possible thing you can imagine for web back end is available through Apache, I mean seriously, Javascript?! really!?  HTML5? .. ugggg ... JSON?? These are play toys kiddies!! good for doodling on a canvas or passing naughty JSON message on IM back and forth but fail very short of being able to make a secure,stable and scalable web back end let alone a serious framework for a web application.

Here's TOMCAT

here's a great page on how to LDAP enable a TOMCAT:

Web Container Authentication Via LDAP

OK so on to the serious front end for your Eclipse development environment so you can control the massively scalable LDAP back end you've created.

directory.apache.org studio installation in eclipse

I also added the LDIF and Schema editor because I have my own schema and LDIF helps to create your LDAP structure, ohh you don't know what these are?  Well you shouldn't be reading this then because it's painful if you are only interested in JSON and Javascript seriously , go home, don't bother to make a system ready for a bazillion users, you can service a couple hundred with your JSON and javascript app.

Now you can use the Apache Directory but I chose to use SLAPD that is available through OPENLDAP which is available on just about every linux package manager and Unix flavour out there, but why listen to me?  Go ahead and create a YAOUMs (yet another obscure user manager system).

Do I sound bitter? My apologies to all who I've offended, if you use LDAP it is extremely complicated and involved, your Javascript and JSON may be perfectly well suited for the small project you may have to do quickly here and there but once you get up and running on the LDAP platform the things one can do with user management are quite astounding and beyond enterprise level thinking.