Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
To understand Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) you must first understand directory services. This article defines directory services and how LDAP structures the entries in a directory service. Pay attention to the basic LDAP components such as attributes, entries, and data information trees (DITs). How does LDAP organize data, and what is LDAP inheritance? Note that there are some variations in LDAP protocols.
What is a Directory Service?
A directory service is used to store, organize and present data in a key-value type format. Typically, directories are optimized for lookups, searches, and read operations over write operations, so they function extremely well for data that is referenced often but changes infrequently.
The data stored in a directory service is often descriptive in nature and used to define the qualities of an entity. An example of a physical object that would be well represented in a directory service is an address book. Each person could be represented by an entry in the directory, with key-value pairs describing their contact information, place of business, etc. Directory services are useful in many scenarios where you want to make qualitative, descriptive information accessible.