Oracle Virtual Directory

I do not have time to read up on Oracle Virtual Directory until recently. 

Oracle Virtual Directory provides Internet and industry-standard LDAP and XML views of existing enterprise identity information, without synchronizing or moving data from its native locations. This accelerates the deployment of applications and reduces costs by eliminating the need to constantly adapt those applications to a changing identity landscape as user populations are added, changed, or removed.

We know LDAP. We know databases. We know Windows Domains/AD. 

So, what is a Virtual Directory?

A Virtual Directory provides a "proxy view" to your actual sources (LDAP, databases, AD).

Sun has a similar product - Sun Directory Proxy Server. However, it is only able to "proxy" to LDAP sources only. It is not able to "proxy" to database sources like what Oracle Virtual Directory does.

Updated on 25th Sep 2009:

I was wrong in pointing out that Sun Directory Proxy Server is not able to "proxy" to database sources 

See here for more information.