Definition: Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is a protocol that may be used to communicate with a directory server. It is an open standard that uses the Basic Encoding Rules subset of ASN.1 to encode communication into LDAP messages.
The core LDAPv3 specification is in RFC 4510, with RFC 4511 defining the actual encoding for the protocol. A number of other specifications are defined in a number of RFCs and Internet Drafts. See the Supported Standards page for a list of a number of LDAP-related specifications.
LDAP defines a number of different types of operations, including:
- Abandon – Provides a way to abort the processing for an operation in progress
- Add – Provides a way to add a new entry to the server
- Bind – Provides a way to authenticate to the server
- Compare – Provides a way to determine whether an entry has a specified attribute value assertion
- Delete – Provides a way to remove entries from the server
- Extended Operation – Provides a way to perform custom processing implemented as an extension to the core LDAP protocol
- Modify – Provides a way to alter the contents of an entry in the server
- Modify DN – Provides a way to rename an entry in the server
- Search – Provides a way to identify all entries that match a given set of criteria
- Unbind – Provides a way to indicate that the client wishes to disconnect from the server
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