User Guide

Table Of Contents
516 Chapter 23: Managing LDAP Directories
About LDAP
The LDAP protocol enables organizations to arrange and access directory information in a
hierarchy. In this context, directory refers to a collection of information, such as a telephone
directory, not a collection of files in a folder on a disk drive.
LDAP originated in the mid-1990s as a response to the need to access ISO X.500 directories from
personal computers that had limited processing power. Since then, products such as iPlanet Server
have been developed that are native LDAP directory servers. Several companies now provide
LDAP access to their directory servers, including Novell NDS, Microsoft Active Directory
Services (ADS), Lotus Domino, and Oracle.
An LDAP directory is typically a hierarchically structured database. Each layer in the hierarchy
typically corresponds to a level of organizational structure.
The following example shows a simple directory structure:
This example is fully symmetrical: all the entries at each layer are of the same type.
You can also structure an LDAP directory so that the layers under one entry contain different
information from the layers under another entry.
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