The lessons in the Building a Service Provider trail
discuss how to write a service provider.
Before embarking on this trail, you should have a good grasp of the
fundamental and advanced JNDI topics described in
The Basics 
,
Beyond the Basics 
, and
Java Objects and the Directory 
trails.
If you are building a service provider for a directory service,
you also should first read the
Tips for LDAP Users 
trail.
The Big Picture
lesson describes the components of a service provider.
It distinguishes between essential and optional components.
The Ground Rules
lesson discusses general rules to follow when writing code for
a service provider. It covers such topics as parameter passing, environment
properties, and threads.
The Essential Components lesson
describes how to write all of the essential components of a
service provider and how to make it extensible.
This includes building a context implementation, an initial context factory,
and a name parser.
The Adding Directory Support lesson
shows you how to add directory support to a service provider
once you have the basic components. This lesson is useful only to those
readers who are building a service provider for a directory service.
The Adding URL Support lesson
shows you how to add URL support to a service provider
once you have the basic components. URL support is an optional feature.
The Adding Federation Support lesson
shows you how to add support for federation to a service provider
once you have the basic components. Federation is an optional feature.
The Miscellaneous lesson
shows you how to package a service provider and how to
implement various advanced features such as referrals and event
notification.
