Active Directory Cookbook

Chapter 18. Interoperability and Integration

Introduction

Active Directory supports several important industry standards, which allow other services and platforms to interoperate and integrate with it. The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is the standards-based protocol used by all major directory service vendors for directory access and management. LDAP is platform neutral, which means you can access and manage data in Active Directory from a variety of platforms. Active Directory uses the Domain Name System (DNS) for its name resolution services so you can use tools, such as nslookup, to locate domain controllers by making DNS queries. Kerberos is the most widely used network authentication protocol and is supported by Active Directory, so even non-Windows-based Kerberos-enabled clients can authenticate. These are just a few of the standards Active Directory supports. Throughout this chapter I will cover how you can access, manage, and integrate Active Directory in ways that are not typically documented.