Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 Inside Out

Design Considerations for Active Directory Search and Global Catalogs

Active Directory uses the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) model to query and manage directory information. Objects in the directory can be located using an LDAP query.

Searching the Tree

Every object has a name relative to its location in the directory and a distinguished name that points to its exact location in relation to the root of the directory tree. The relative distinguished name (RDN) is the actual name of the object. The distinguished name (DN) is the complete object name as seen by Active Directory.

When you work your way down the tree, you add a naming component for each successive level. In Figure 33-2, the relative names of several objects are shown on ...