Directory Service


What is a directory service? www.dummies.com defines it this way: “A directory service is a customizable information store that functions as a single point from which users can locate resources and services distributed throughout the network. This customizable information store also gives administrators a single point for managing its objects and their attributes. Although this information store appears as a single point to the users of the network, it is actually most often stored in a distributed form.”

Dummies goes on to say: “The database that forms a directory service is not designed for transactional data. (For this reason, many people prefer to use the phrase “information store” in their definitions of a directory service.) The data stored in your directory service should be fairly stable and should change only as frequently as the objects in your network.”

Wikipedia says: “a directory service or name service maps the names of network resources to their respective network addresses.” Wikipedia goes on to say: “A directory service is a critical component of a network operating system.” A Windows Domain is an example of a network operating system.

Wikipedia says: “Each resource on the network is considered an object by the directory server. Information about a particular resource is stored as a collection of attributes associated with that resource or object.”

Any successful directory service will be using LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol). LDAP specifies a standard, vendor-independent syntax for querying a directory service.