The Little Black Book

Marshall Rose has achieved fame for his ability to build implementations in the face of fuzzy specifications and political firefights. As the Internet/OSI Combat Engineer, he has withstood opposition and friendly fire (regardless of your point of view). His books are noted for an intriguing combination of implementation experience, lucid description of theory, and soapboxes.

The Little Black Book merits the attention of all who are interested in directory services. It documents the struggle to build an operational distributed service, including applications which are faithful to the distributed model. This isn't a mere implementation exercise, it involves innovation at all levels, from basic X.500 mechanisms to applications which are seen by the users as carrots, not sticks. Progress and evolution need starting points; this is one.

While the engineering can be written off as a product of his genius, the organizational and political progress recorded in The Little Black Book is noteworthy. In addition to harnessing the work of many talented individuals, Marshall may even have contributed to the completion of registration plans. Of course, it might be that he just wanted to get on to the fine lunches and dinners.

1. Introduction
1. White Pages in the Real World
2. White Page in the Computer World
3. Roadmap
2. Protocols for Open Systems
1. The OSI Suite
1. Models, Conventions, and Notation
2. Services
3. Interfaces
4. Protocols
5. The 7 Layers
6. Services Revisited
7. Abstract Syntax Notation One
8. The Upper-Layer Infrastructure
9. The Application Layer Structure
2. The Internet Suite
1. Architectural Model
2. Services and Protocols
3. The Application Layer Structre
3. Introduction to the Directory
1. Information Model
1. Entries
2. Schema
3. Structuring
4. Naming and User-Friendliness
2. Functional Model
3. Organizational Model
4. Security Model
5. Directory Standards
6. Implementation Focus
1. Writing Distinguished Names
4. Accessing the Directory
1. Information Infrastructure
1. Object Class
2. Attribute Syntaxes and Types
3. Attribute Sets
4. Selected Object Classes
5. One Last Formalism for Attributes
6. The Directory Schema
7. Names
8. Implementation Focus
2. The Directory Service
1. Interrogation Requests
2. Modification Requests
3. Implementation Focus
3. The Directory Access Protocol
1. Application Layer Structure of a DUA
2. Directory Interactions
4. The Structure of the DIT
1. Naming is Problematic
2. The Rosetta Stone of the Directory
3. A Possible National Decision
4. Reflections on the Freedonia Naming Architecture
5. Applying the Directory
1. A White pages Pilot
1. White Pages Pilot Schema
2. White Pages Pilot DIT Structure
3. White Pages Pilot Guidelines
2. Interrogation Algorithms
1. Directory Search Revisited
2. Simple Naming
3. White Pages Lookup
4. Application Entity Lookup
5. Internet Mailbox Lookup
3. Implementation Focus
1. The Split-DASE
2. Transport Listener
3. The Directory Assistance Lookup
4. White pages User-Interfaces
1. The Basic Interface
2. An Interface for the X Windows System
3. An Interface for the Macintosh
4. An Interface for MH
5. Beyond the White Pages
1. Use of Directory to Support MHS
2. Use of Directory to Support Bibliographic Retrieval
6. Directory System Agents
1. Knowledge
1. The DSA Information Tree
2. Knowledge Information
3. First-Level DSAs
2. The Directory System Protocol
3. Implementation Focus
1. Representing the DIT in stable-storage
2. Local Configuration Information
3. Operational Attributes
4. Replication
5. OSI Addressing
6. DIT Navigation
7. Choice of DSA
8. Chaining or Referral
9. Naming DSAs
10. DSA Management
4. Shared Namespaces
5. White Pages Pilot Revisited
1. Uniformity of Service
2. Access Control
3. The Right Choice?
6. For Further Reading
1. on the White Pages Pilot
7. The Future
1. A Long Dark Night for Open Systems
1. The Never-Ending Standard
2. So Many Standards, So Little Time
3. The End-Effect of the OSI Standards Process
4. Malicious GOSIP
5. The Changing Nature of of the Internet Standardization Process
6. The Barbarians at the Gates
7. An Error in Judgement
8. Internet vs. OSI Revisited
2. The Painful Dawn of Directory
1. National Coverage
2. A Competitive Market for Interrogation Algorithms
3. In Conclusion

1. Towards a US National decision
1. Approach
1. Names and User-Friendliness
2. Choice of RDN Names
3. Outline of the Scheme
2. The Naming Process
1. Right-To-Use
2. Registration
3. Publication
3. Structuring Objects
1. The National Level
2. The Regional Level
3. The Local Level
4. ADDMD Operators
5. Summary of Structuring Objects
4. Entity Objects
1. Organizations
2. Residential Persons
5. Listing Entities
1. Organizations
2. Residential Persons
6. Usage Examples
2. Ordering ISODE
3. An Overview of ISODE
1. What is ISODE?
1. Overall Organization
2. ISODE as a Development Environment
1. Building Distributed Applications
2. Transport-Independence
3. Transition to OSI
3. Pilot Usage of ISODE
4. ISODE as a Reference Implementation
5. In Retrospect
1. Is Unlicensed Software Bad?
2. Is Mixing Protocol Stacks Bad?
3. Is full transition to OSI really necessary?
4. Will OSI Network Management ever work?
5. In Conclusion

Historical value only, it wasn't even very good when it was published either.