What is LDAP?

LDAP is another in a long list of anacronyms which IT professionals enjoy tossing into their daily conversations. LDAP stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, and the protocol is an IETF RFC. There are books and papers on the subject which you should read if you are wondering "what is all the fuss about directories." If you are interested in the standards work done on the LDAP protocol, you can view a collection of LDAP standards and proposals.

What is available through mozilla.org?

The Netscape Directory SDK enables you to write applications which access, manage, and update the information stored in an LDAP directory. There are two SDKs and a set of Perl modules available here. You can get the source code for these SDKs and modules here:

• Directory SDK for C

• Directory SDK for Java

• PerLDAP

• Tools for LDAP
  • Unix Tools
  • NT Domain Tools
  • PerLDAP for PeopleSoft

The source code for the all of the directory related tools are covered by the Netscape Public License. (Note that this release does not include the source code for the command-line tools and the source code for SSL functions.)

If you are interested in contributing to the source code for the Netscape Directory SDK, read the general information provided under "getting involved".

If you have questions or want to discuss issues about the Directory SDK source release or the PerLDAP source release, you can post a message to the netscape.public.mozilla.directory newsgroup. (For more information about the newsgroups and mailing lists available from mozilla.org, see the community page.)