Directory services are designed and developed for managing different aspects of modern computer networks. In this thesis, the use of directory services as central authentication backend and repository for provisioning email applications is presented and analysed with regard to its resource requirements. The following products are evaluated in this context IBM SecureWay Directory, Messaging Direct M-Vault, Microsoft Active Directory, Netscape Directory Server, Novell eDirectory, and OpenLDAP.
On the subject of centralized authentication, a detailed analysis of the SASL protocol and the GSSAPI authentication mechanism as implemented in directory products is given. SASL GSSAPI allows the use of a Kerberos 5 network authentication infrastructure in different application layer protocols.
As a sample application, a directory service for bibliographical information is presented. A directory schema based on the BiBTeX format is defined and a web-frontend is implemented as a Java Servlet.