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Please explain
Authored by: nekura on Sep 03, '02 06:12:18AM

LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is, basically, a protocol to access a tree-like database. It supports either direct access (you want an information and you know where it is in the tree) or search (you know partial information on what you are looking for).
This is, of course, a very restrictive view of this powerful tool.

LDAP can be used to achieve many tasks.
Email address directories is one of the most known of the end-user, but it's also very common to use LDAP as an user database, for authentication purposes.

A more powerful use can be to store and manage resources of a system : accounts, groups, shares, printers, servers... and that's exactly what does NetInfo, the core database of the OS X system. (As a side note, this is also the case with Active Directory, at the core of Win2k servers)
I've not had my hands on a running OS X server, but I would guess it uses LDAP to allow network users to identify themselves against a centralized user database, and allow them access to resources.



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