Questions, Questions, Questions...

LDAP is a standards based protocol for accessing a directory service. An example of a directory service is a phone book. Typical data contained in a phone book are: Name, Address and Phone number.

• LDAP was originally developed to store this type of data and a lot more, including E-Mail addresses, Office location, fax numbers and so on.
• With the growth of computer technology, LDAP is oftern used to centralize authentication of user logins across multiple computer systems.
• Another common use of LDAP is the repository for configuration data for computer systems and applications.
• Directory information is relatively static, so LDAP is optimized for read-only access.
• LDAP is a TCP/IP based and allows LDAP to participate as a service within a client-server environment.
• LDAP will inter-operate with clients and servers on different platforms and operating systems.
• In the Linux world, LDAP may be used as an authentication service for Linux computers. RedHat 7.x offers this as a configuration option during installation.
• Samba can be configured to use an LDAP server for user authentication.

Open-LDAP is an open source version of LDAP client and server software. All examples presented here have been developed with the Open-LDAP libraries and API's.