[transshipment] What is LDAP

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is an open-standard protocol for accessing X.500 directory services. The protocol runs over Internet transport protocols, such as TCP.

LDAP is a lightweight alternative to the X.500 Directory Access Protocol (DAP) for use on the Internet. It uses TCP/IP stack verses the overly complex OSI stack. It also has other simplications, such as the representing most attribute values and many protocol items as textual strings, that are designed to make clients easier to implement.

X.500 recommendations are available from the ITU ().

LDAP version 3 (LDAPv3) is an Internet "Proposed Standard" and is documented by the various RFCs, including:

• - Lightweight Directory Access Protocol: Technical Specification Road Map
• - LDAP: The Protocol
• - LDAP: Directory Information Models
• - LDAP: Authentication Methods and Security Mechanisms
• - LDAP: DN
• - LDAP: Search Filters
• - LDAP: URL
• - LDAP: Syntaxes and Matching Rules
• - LDAP: Internationalized String Preparation
• - LDAP: Schema for User Applications

LDAP version 2 (LDAPv2) is a now Historic (see ).