1.What is LDAP?

LDAP is the Lighweight Directory Access Protocol. LDAP is designed to

be a standard way of providing access to directory services.
A directory service is just a database that has been designed to be read
from more than it is designed to written to. LDAP was derived from
X.500, the OSI Directory Access Protocol. Some existing directory
services are Sun's NIS+ and Novell's NDS.
2. Why should I use LDAP?
LDAP is now the standard for providing access to directory information
like company phone/email directories. It is also being used to act as
a gateway to other electronic information systems as a meta-directory
by companies like Ford and Home Depot to deploy their
intranet/extranet systems. It is poised to become the standard
lightweight database for the Internet, much like the Berkeley database
became for UNIX.
Many companies store user information in an LDAP server for shared use
by Web servers, mail servers, company phonebooks, and other
applications.
With some LDAP servers, you can use the default database or you
can write your own functions to access directory data in any other
existing legacy system like a SQL database. The Netscape Directory
SDKs provide you with a fully functional code to either add LDAP
support to your existing applications or to write your own LDAP
clients from scratch. Since they are free and the source code is
freely available, you can fix any bugs or add operations you need
easily.
3.What is LDIF?
LDIF is the LDAP Data Interchange Format. LDIF is an ASCII format that
is used to exchange data between the server and the client or for
export between servers. It can also be used to make changes to the
LDAP server when using the command line utilities. Binary data can be
referenced in an external file or included in-line BASE-64 encoded.
4. What is an entry?
A LDAP entry is basically a record in the LDAP database. LDAP entries
are composed of attributes and values. Each entry has a special