Lightweight Directory Access Protocol free essay sample

Network directories on the other hand are specialized databases that store information about devices, applications, people and other aspects of a computer network. It is an Internet protocol that e mail and other programs use to look up information from a server. It is not limited to contact information or information about people. It is appropriate for any kind of directory like information where fast look-ups and less frequent updates exist. It was created in 1995 as an academic university project, and then commercialized by Netscape in the late 1990’s. t is finding much acceptance because of its status as an Internet standard. It can also be customized to store any type of text or binary data. It is important to note that it is not a directory but a protocol. However, it organizes information in a hierarchical manner using directories. And these directories can store a variety of information and can even be used like a Network Information Service (NIS). We will write a custom essay sample on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Hence, enabling anyone to access their account from any machine on the LDAP enabled network. In many cases, it is used as a virtual phone directory, allowing users to easily access contact information of other users. But it is more flexible than a phone directory. This is because it is capable of referring a query to other LDAP servers throughout the world. Thus, providing an ad-hoc global repository of information. It is hoped that at the end of this discourse on LDAP even a layman would have a simple yet clear understanding of what LDAP is. To give its advantage over X500. To reveal the purpose, and use of LDAP generally. Protocol is it is pertinent to understand what a directory and protocol is. A directory is an organized set of records: e. g. , a telephone directory which is an alphabetical list of persons and organizations with an address and phone number in each record. A directory is also a way in which complex information is organized, making it easy to find. Directories list resources—for example, people, books in a library, or merchandise in a department store—and give details about each one. They can be either offline—for example, a telephone book or a department store catalog—or online. The word protocol is from the Greek word â€Å"protocollon† which was a leaf of paper glued to a manuscript volume, describing its contents. A protocol can be said to be a description of a set of procedures to be followed when communicating. Protocols are to communication what programming languages are to computations. They can also be used to describe what grammar is to language. In information technology, it is a set of rules that end points in a telecommunication connection use when they communicate. Protocols exist at various levels in a telecommunication connection. For example, there are protocols for the interchange of data at the hard ware devise level as well as at the application program level. In the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI), there are one or more protocols at each layer in the telecommunication exchange that both ends of the exchange must recognize and observe. On the internet, we have the TCP/IP protocols which comprise of: * Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which is a set of rules to exchange messages with other internet points at the information packet level * Internet Protocol (IP), which makes use of a set of rules to send and receive messages at the Internet address level. * Other protocols that include the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and File Transfer Protocol (FTP), each being defined set of rules to use with corresponding programs elsewhere on the internet. With this in view we can now say in this context that a Light Weight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is a set of rules that enables us to read and edit organized set of records, resources or information. This is to put it in the simplest of terms for easy understanding. According to Donelly (2008) Strictly speaking, though, LDAP isn’t a database at all , but a protocol used to access information stored in an information directory (also known as an LDAP directory). A more precise formulation might look something like this: Using LDAP, data will be retrieved from (or stored in) the correct location within an information directory. LDAP is a standard, extensible Directory Access Protocol. It is a common language that LDAP clients and servers use to communicate. It requires a minimal amount of networking software on the client side, which makes it particularly attractive for Internet-based, thin client applications. LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is a simplified ver sion of the DAP (Directory Access Protocol) protocol, which is used to gain access to X. 500 directories. LDAP was designed at the University of Michigan to adapt a complex enterprise directory system (called X. 500) to the modern Internet. Unknown (2004). At this point you may be wondering what the X500 is. X. 500 Directory Service is a standard way to develop an electronic directory of people in an organization so that it can be part of a global directory available to anyone in the world with Internet access. X. 500 is an overall model for Directory Services in the OSI world. Such a directory is sometimes called a global White Pages directory. The idea is to be able to look up people in a user-friendly way by name, department, or organization. Many enterprises and institution have created an X500 directory. Because these directories are organized as part of a single global directory, you can search for hundreds of thousands of people from a single place on the World Wide Web. X. 500 is an international standard for directories and full-featured, but it is also complex, requiring a lot of computing resources and the full OSI stack. Thus making it difficult to run easily on a PC and over TCP/IP. The X500 is too heavy to support on desktops and over the internet, hence the need for a lightweight protocol. A lightweight protocol is any of a class of protocols designed for use on high speed inter-networks, e. g. LDAP is an open protocol, and applications are independent of the server platform hosting the directory. However, LDAP is like X500 in the sense that it is both an information model and a protocol for querying and manipulating it. LDAP’s data and name space model is essentially that of X500. The major difference is that the LDAP protocol is designed to run directly over the TCP/IP stack. The main thing about the X500 is that it defines a global directory structure. This means that anyone with an X500 or LDAP client may peruse the global directory just as they can use a web browser to peruse the global web. As a protocol, LDAP does not define how programs work on either the client or server side. It defines the language used for client programs to talk to servers (and servers to servers, too). It can be used to access a standalone directory service or a directory service that is back ended by X500. The LDAP protocol is both cross-platform and standards-based, so applications neednt worry about the type of server hosting the directory. In fact, LDAP is finding much wider industry acceptance because of its status as an Internet standard. Under them in the hierarchy might be entries for smaller organization and so on down. The hierarchy might end with people or resources. Each entry is identified by a Distinguished Name (DN). A Distinguished Name consists of a name that uniquely identifies the entry at that hierarchical level (e. g. Peter and Paul and Mary are different user ID’s that identify different entries at the same level) and a path of names that trace the entry back to the root of the tree. Where o represents the organization, and is the root of the tree ou refers to the organizational unit which is a unit within the organization uid refers to user ID of the entry. WHY USE LDAP? The main benefit of using LDAP is that information for an entire organization can be consolidated into a central repository. That is LDAP can be used as a central directory that is accessible from anywhere on the network. LDAP makes for ease of access across platforms. To buttress this, (Donelly, 2008) says â€Å"Perhaps the biggest plus for LDAP is that your company can access the LDAP directory from almost any computing platform, from any one of the increasing number of readily available, LDAP-aware applications. Its also easy to customize your companys internal applications to add LDAP support†. LDAP also supports a number of back-end databases in which to store directories. This allows administrators the flexibility to deploy the database best suited for the type of information the server is to disseminate. Hence, it has the ability to distribute servers to where they are needed. LDAP allows you locate organizations, individuals, and other resources such as files and devices in a network, whether on the Internet or on a corporate intranet, and whether or not you know the domain name, IP address, or geographic whereabouts. (Donelly, 2008).