seminar topic

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol:-
DAP is actually a simple protocol that is used
to access directory services. It is an open,
vendor neutral information such as e-mail
addresses and public keys for secure
transmission of data. The information contained
within an LDAP directory could be ASCII text
files, JPEG photographs or sound files. One
way to reduce the time taken to search for
information is to replicate the directory
information over different platforms so that
the process of locating a specific data is streamlined
and more resilient to failure of connections and
computers. This is what is done with
information in an LDAP structure.
LDAP, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol,
is an Internet protocol runs over TCP/IP
that e-mail programs use to lookup contact
information from a server. A directory structure
is a specialized database, which is optimized for
browsing, searching, locating and reading
information. Thus LDAP make it possible to
obtain directory information such as e-mail
addresses and public keys. LDAP can handle
other information, but at present it is typically
used to associate names with phone numbers
and e-mail addresses.
LDAP is a directory structure and is completely
based on entries for each piece of information.
An entry is a collection of attributes that has
a globally-unique Distinguished Name (DN).
The information in LDAP is arranged in a
hierarchical tree-like structure. LDAP services
are implemented by using the client-server
architecture. There are options for referencing
and accessing information within the LDAP
structure. An entry is referenced by the type
of its uniquely distinguishable name. Unlike the
other directory structure, which allows the user
access to all the information available, LDAP
allows information to be accessed only after
authenticating the user. It also supports privacy
and integrity security services. There are two
daemons for LDAP which are slapd and slurpd.
THE LDAP DOMAIN THE COMPONENTS OF
AN LDAP DOMAIN A small domain may have
a single LDAP server, and a few clients.
The server commonly runs slapd, which will
serve LDAP requests and update data.
The client software is comprised of system
libraries translating normal lib calls into LDAP
data requests and providing some form of
update functionality .Larger domains may
have several LDAP slaves
(read-only replicas of a master read/write LDAP server).
For large installations, the domain may be
divided into sub domains, with referrals to
‘glue’ the sub domains together.
THE STRUCTURE OF AN LDAP DOMAIN A simple
LDAP domain is structured on the surface in a
manner similar to an NIS domain; there are
masters, slaves, and clients. The clients may query
masters or slaves for information, but all updates must go to the masters. The ‘domain name’ under LDAP is slightly different than
that under NIS. LDAP domains may use
an organization name and country.
The clients may or may not authenticate
themselves to the server when performing
operations, depending on the configuration
of the client and the type of information requested.
Commonly access to no sensitive information
(such as port to service mappings) will be
unauthenticated requests, while password
information requests or any updates are
authenticated. Larger organizations may
subdivide their LDAP domain into sub domains.
LDAP allows for this type of scalability,
and uses ‘referrals’ to allow the
passing off of clients from one server to the next
(the same method is used by slave servers
to pass modification requests to the master).
satya prakash tiwari
b.tech(c.s.e)