Introduction to LDAP

LDAP stands for Light weight directory access protocol, used to access directory information. By using LDAP, you can perform, all the CRUD (Create, Rename, Update, delete) operations on a directory. Many Programming languages like C, C++, Java provides their own interfaces to work with LDAP.

What is a Directory?

A directory is a database that stores some information, when I said database, don't map it with RDBMS systems like MySQL, Oracle, DB2. Directory is completely different from traditional RDBMS systems. For time being assume, it like storage, that stores information in hierarchical fashion.

What can I do using Directory?

Since directory is mainly used to serve Enterprise applications, you can do

a.   Store user information.

b.   Store all the computers, laptops, servers, printers any other hardware devise information.

c.    You can perform all CRUD (Create, Rename, Update, Delete) operations.

How directory different from DBMS?

a. Directory is mainly used in situations, where data is retrieved more frequently than updating. Usually directories store information about employee, servers, printers etc., these information stored in the directory is not frequently subjected to change or modification. RDBMS usually write centric, transaction based.  RDBMS is designed to deal with frequent writes.

b. Directories are not designed to store large objects, In case of RDBMS, you can store huge amounts of data.

c. Directories store information in Hierarchical fashion, where as RDBMS stores data in tables.

d. Each entry in directory has attributes associated with it. Directory attributes can be single or multi-valued. For example, a person can have more than one mail id.

e. In real world scenario, Directories are used to deal with Authentication (Check the login credentials), Authorization (Restrict unauthorized users from accessing resources).

What is directory object?

A directory object is an entry in the directory. For example, An employee, printer, server all are directory objects. Every object in the directory has attributes associated with it. For example, a person object has attributes like firstName, lastName, phoneNumber etc., A printer object has attributes like speed, resolution, and color etc.,. You can search objects by name, attributes associated with it.

How directories store information?

Directories store information in tree format, called a directory information tree (DIT).

What is object class?

An object class in a directory specifies what are the attributes (Mandatory, Optional) attributes associated with an object. For example, cn(common name), sn(surname) are the mandatory attributes for person object, where as telephoneNumber, password, description are the optional attributes for a person.

References

https://support.novell.com/techcenter/articles/ana20011101.html

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