OpenLDAP
OpenLDAP is a free, open source implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). OpenLDAP is a platform-independent protocol that comes with SUSE Linux as well a many other Linux distributions. It is released under its own OpenLDAP license. OpenLDAP is a very convenient way of sharing system information across multiple platforms. For example, LDAP is often used to authenticate users to network services through one or more applications accessing an LDAP directory.
As companies grow they tend to create islands of information by storing user information in multiple data sources. For example the Human Resource department keeps track of employees using one system, while the Accounting departments uses another, and the Telecom uses yet another system, not to mention all the different departments controlling access to different network services. Although there are ways synchronize information across different data sources, perhaps the best solution is to never allow them to occur and using OpenLDAP is a free solution for such problems.
Unlike a relational database LDAP is an object-oriented collection of objects that are organized in a tree hierarchy with each object having a unique distinguished name.
In the example shown about the root DN is dc=example,dc=com, but could just have easily been o=novell,c=us or just o=novell. The root object can consist of any of the following:
other objects shown are:
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