Directory service

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A directory service (in English directory service ) is in a network a central collection of data of certain kinds. The data stored in a hierarchical database can be compared, searched for, created, modified and deleted according to the client-server principle . It should be noted here that "directory" is meant in the sense of a telephone book, for example, and not in the sense of "file folder" in computer systems.

application

In the Internet and corporate or internal administrative Intranet directory services are typically used to collect user data centrally and to make applications. Compared to a decentralized storage z. With a separate service for each program, for example, central administration has the advantage that users and rights only need to be changed once at a central point.

Most of the time, the data of a directory service is read. Changes to the entries in this database are rare. For this reason, directory services offer a much lower read access time than other databases.

technical structure

The data collections are usually based on a database in which the data is recorded. In order to get in contact with this service, network protocols are used to query or update data from the directory. In most cases, a Directory Access Protocol (DAP) is used. Standard implementations of this Protocol DAP from the X.500 architecture and LDAP (in English, a "lightweight" lightweight ) form of the DAP.

The structure of the directory services is based on the so-called X.500 standard. Almost all known directory services are based on the LDAP standard today.

Well-known directory services

See also