Directory Services. Introduction to LDAP

When information systems became widely distributed and hierarchically complicated, appeared the necessity of special tool creation that helps to easily view and modify the structured data. After more than 70 years of producing and managing telephone directories, telecommunication companies introduced the concept of directory services. Directories became the optimal solution of the stored information searching and retrieving. For managing directories directory services software is used that helps to store, organize and give access to the stored information.

The main differences between directories and databases:

-         directories are commonly networked / databases are commonly stored on one machine;

-         directories are commonly widely distributed / classical databases are usually heterogeneous;

-         directory client does not use full-fledged language as a part of its communication with a server / for data queries and manipulation databases often have complex query languages;

-         directories are built of tree-like informational structures / databases usually are not structured hierarchically;

-         directories are commonly widely read but not edited / databases are often supplemented with new information.

Standardization:

When the necessity of common and generally used certified standard creation appeared, X.500 suite protocol was created. Its primary concept is that there is a hierarchical organization of entries, Directory Information Tree that is distributed across one or more servers. This is a kind of general suite for all network protocols. Its final conception is very difficult and almost impossible to use for custom needs that is why appeared a necessity of alternative lightweight directory protocols creation. The most widespread of them is the alternative to DAP (Directory Access Protocol) – LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol).

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol:

Though LDAP is based on X.500 standard, it is simplified and adapted to custom needs. There are lots of advantages of LDAP using. It offers system administrators a way to centralize and make available all sorts of infrastructure information. It is widely supported and can be immediately available to many clients, libraries and web applications. Many e-mail clients support LDAP lookup.

Every entry in LDAP directory has a set of attributes and a distinguished name (DN). Every attribute has a name and single or multiple values. Generally LDAP supports the following operations: start, bind, search, compare, add/delete/modify an entry, abandon, extended operation, unbind. Among large variety of LDAP Software Softerra LDAP Administrator holds its leadership for years already.

Why using Softerra LDAP Administrator?

-         It is Explorer-like LDAP-client designed especially for Windows;

-         It supports OpenLDAP, Netscape/iPlanet, Novell eDirectory, Oracle Internet Directory, Lotus Domino, Microsoft Active Directory, Fedora/Red Hat, ApacheDS, OpenDS.

-         It helps to visually modify an LDAP directory without using command line utilities but still using Windows GUI;

-         It is very simple for management and navigation throughout a directory no matter how large or hierarchically complex it is;

-         It offers LDIF import and export functionality for maintenance to eliminate all sorts of data corruption risks.

Directory service software helps to store, access and organize the information that is contained in directories. After networking standards creation the X.500 suite appeared that gave way to LDAP directory and afterwards Active Directory creation. For LDAP entries viewing LDAP browser is used. Softerra LDAP Administrator is an essential tool to modify the entries in a directory.