LDAP Directories Explained: An Introduction and Analysis

Chapter 3. Client LDAP Operations

While crafting the namespace structure is critical to the directory administrator, the LDAP operations are at the heart of the client-to-server interaction. The LDAP operations are therefore what the typical user of your directory needs to know about, although good client software abstracts even this interaction from view. Users probably need only the search operation, which happens to be the most detailed operation. There are ten primary operations defined by the LDAP standard. Administrators and programmers use this full set as they manage directory information and create special business processes that interact with the directory information. This chapter describes the purpose of each of the ten operations, ...