Quick Look: LDAP

You may not realize it but you've very likely used LDAP. If you've signed onto a computer at a business or a school/college campus within the last 30 years then you almost definitely have. LDAP stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. It's an open standard being supported by companies such as Microsoft, Apple, IBM, etc. I've already described DNS as akin to a phonebook for the internet. However, LDAP is like a company-wide phonebook. LDAP is the protocol for a special database that's been designed to store attributes about users, services, etc.

In most corporate settings, you can use your email client to find the email address of somebody in the company, even if they've never sent you an email. This can be done whether you're an all Windows shop or an all Linux environment. Let's assume that you're using Outlook in a Windows environment. Outlook will coordinate with the Exchange server, which shares a lot of information with your org's Active Directory infrastructure. Active Directory (AD) is it's own service on the network but it communicates via the LDAP protocol. LDAP doesn't define how applications work: It merely gives them a shared communication protocol. 

LDAP records can contain names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, e,tc. They can also contain access permissions configured by the SysAdmin or IT department. After all, not everyone needs the same access as everyone else. LDAP also defines the schema for this database of information. The schema sets how the format and attributes of the records looks to other systems. As a database, you can query it for information. While LDAP queries could be their own post or series of posts, it's possible to search for all staff  whose last name contains John in the San Francisco office. Return their full name, email, and title. 

This was just a quick look at what LDAP is. I hope this helped any of you who were curious to know.