Directory services are information infrastructures for locating, administering, and organizing common data objects representing users, groups, files, folders, computers, and printers on a computer network. Directory services map the names of resources and other objects to physical addresses on a network and may promote convenience in locating resources. Objects in a directory service may be organized in a hierarchical database structure. Users, groups, and resources are stored as objects and information about the objects is stored as attributes in schemas. Objects are described in classes with attributes providing specific information about objects such as name and primary characteristics. Directory services have evolved to be readily accessible by various tools using computing protocols, for example the lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP), based on the transmission control protocol, internet protocol (TCP/IP) suite of networking protocols. The lightweight directory access protocol is an application protocol that may be used for querying and modifying directory services. Numerous vendors have developed proprietary directory services database implementations based on these protocols.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds