Overview of LDAP and its Working
LDAP stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is a protocol which allows users to interact with the directories to fetch queries and serve requests.
With the help of LDAP, we can perform multiple operations like raising ticket for IT center, Bulk mailing and other tasks.
LDAP is a vendor-neutral protocol that provides flexibility to maintain and access the data stored within the directory. LDAP can also establish efficient authentication mechanisms.
In the above figure, we can clearly see how LDAP is performing multi-operations and allowing business applications to carry out all the operations in a single minute manner.
LDAP performs a query function to retrieve the results. An LDAP query generally consists: -
Session Connection- Connection to the server via LDAP port.
Request- Submitting a query like searching some mail IDs.
Response- Getting the result from the LDAP side.
Completion- Session completion for the communication.
Before a LDAP request is carried out, an authentication mechanism s carried out in either of these ways: -
Simple Authentication: Simple user name and passwords to connect to the server.
Simple Authentication with Security Layer: A secondary service is also used to perform authentication, to lay an advanced layer.
Note: Sometimes people confuse LDAP with Microsoft AD.
→ Microsoft AD is a directory service, developed by Microsoft, which performs within the Microsoft Windows Environment.
→ While LDAP is a protocol, which is used to access active directory. LDAP is a vendor-neutral protocol that can access directories whether they are in Windows environment or Linux environment.
Thank you for reading this!!
You can connect with me on LinkedIN: