It's common in many organizations for colleagues to share workspaces. Keeping users updated and registered to a central server farm has quickly become a top priority for administrators. Additionally, various network services, such as Apache web server or the email server Postfix, require their own user management. Maintaining multiple user accounts on different computers can result in organizational difficulties and security risks when, for example, no longer authorized users have been forgotten on some computer accounts.

LDAP

Implementing a directory service allows a user to centrally manage all users. The Lightweight Data Access Protocol (LDAP) is an example of such a service. This directory service will provide you with data about users and devices across computers and platforms. With LDAP, you can also have telephone data and address data available through authentication.

LDAP was developed in 1993 to gain access to DAP databases, which were created in the 1980s, via TCP/IP. Back then, they used a X.500-Standard, which covered all seven layers of the OSI reference model and made it difficult to implement. Originally, the developers conceptualized LDAP for proxies to make DAP more easily accessible on various systems. Later, it received its own database back end and thus worked without the DAP database. LDAP builds its structures hierarchically, so they can be mapped out easily on a tree. Thanks to its object-oriented design, LDAP lets you easily use heredity and polymorphism in the management of data stored in tree directory entries.

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