Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

Last few months, I'm trying to put a post for LDAP. Now LDAP is widely used in many companies. LDAP Testing is bit different from (native mode) user authentication. Again It is divided as single domain and multi-domain LDAP. Test team is treating LDAP as a another environment/stack to certify any product.

LDAP - Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. LDAP has become a mandatory in IT Projects. It is a set of protocols for accessing information directories. LDAP is based on the standards contained within the X.500 standard, but is significantly simpler. Also unlike X.500, LDAP supports TCP/IP, which is necessary for any type of Internet access.

The LDAP Interchange Format (LDIF), defined in RFC 2849, is a standard text file format for storing LDAP configuration information and directory contents. The dn attribute uniquely identifies the DN of the entry. In its most basic form, an LDIF file is:

• A collection of entries separated from each other by blank lines


• A mapping of attribute names to values


• A collection of directives that instruct the parser how to process the information

Descriptions for commonly used abbreviations:

• cn - Common Name


• ou - Organizational Unit


• dc - Domain Component


• dn - Distinguished Name


• rdn - Relative Distinguished Name


• upn - User Principal Name

Sample LDAP configuration:
Principal : cn=admin,cn=Users,DC=rmdomain,DC=com
Users baseDN : DC=rmdomain,DC=com
Group baseDN : DC=rmdomain,DC=com
Bind User DN : cn=admin,cn=users,dc=rmdomain,dc=com

To know more about LDAP

Wiki - Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
LDAP Concepts & Overview
LDAP Authentication