Directory service

A directory service (english directory service) is in a network a centralized collection of data of a certain type is available. The data stored in a hierarchical database, the data can be compared by the client - server principle, searched, created, modified, and deleted.

Application

On the Internet and corporate intranets or authorities - directory services are used generally to collect user data centrally and to make applications. Compared to a remote storage, for example, a private service for each program, the central administration has the advantage that users and rights at a central location only need to be changed.

Most of the read operation is performed on the data of a directory service. Changes to the entries on this database are rarer. For this reason, directory services provide reading a much lower access time than other databases.

Technical structure

The data collection is usually based on a database in which the data is recorded. To get in touch with this service, network protocols are used to query data from the directory or update. In most cases, doing a Directory Access Protocol (DAP ) is used, standard implementations of this protocol are DAP from the X.500 architecture, LDAP, a lightweight (English lightweight ) form of the DAPs.

The structure of the Directory Services in principle according to the so-called X.500 standard.

Known Directory Services

Known directory services, today virtually all based on the LDAP standard, are:

Client–server model Lightweight Directory Access Protocol Samba (Software) Novell eDirectory
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