Common LDAP RFCs

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This article was previously published under Q221606

SUMMARY

This article enumerates the RFCs that define Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).

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MORE INFORMATION

LDAPv2

RFC 1777 - Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/cis-redirect/htbin/rfc/rfc1777.html)

The protocol described in this document is designed to provide access to the X.500 directory while not incurring the resource requirements of the Directory Access Protocol (DAP). This protocol is specifically targeted at simple management applications and browser applications that provide simple read/write interactive access to the X.500 directory, and is intended to be a complement to the DAP itself.

Key aspects of LDAP are:

Protocol elements are carried directly over TCP or other transport, bypassing much of the session/presentation overhead.
Many protocol data elements are encoding as ordinary strings (for example, Distinguished Names).
A lightweight BER encoding is used to encode all protocol elements.

RFC 1778 - The String Representation of Standard Attribute Syntaxes (http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/cis-redirect/htbin/rfc/rfc1778.html)

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) requires that the contents of AttributeValue fields in protocol elements be octet strings. This document defines the requirements that must be satisfied by encoding rules used to render X.500 directory attribute syntaxes into a form suitable for use in the LDAP, and then goes on to define the encoding rules for the standard set of attribute syntaxes.

RFC 1779 - A String Representation of Distinguished Names (http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/cis-redirect/htbin/rfc/rfc1779.html)

The OSI Directory uses distinguished names as the primary keys to entries in the directory. Distinguished Names are encoded in ASN.1. When a distinguished name is communicated between to users not using a directory protocol (for example, in a mail message), there is a need to have a user-oriented string representation of distinguished name. This specification defines a string format for representing names, which is designed to give a clean representation of commonly used names, whilst being able to represent any distinguished name.

RFC 1959 - An LDAP URL Format (http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/cis-redirect/htbin/rfc/rfc1959.html)

This document describes a format for an LDAP Uniform Resource Locator, which will allow Internet clients to have direct access to the LDAP protocol. While LDAP currently is used only as a front end to the X.500 directory, the URL format described here is general enough to handle the case of stand-alone LDAP servers (that is, LDAP servers not back-ended by X.500).

NOTE: This RFC has been superceded by RFC 2255 (http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/cis-redirect/htbin/rfc/rfc2255.html)

RFC 1960 - A String Representation of LDAP Search Filters (http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/cis-redirect/htbin/rfc/rfc1960.html)

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) defines a network representation of a search filter transmitted to an LDAP server. Some applications may find it useful to have a common way of representing these search filters in a human-readable form. This document defines a human-readable string format for representing LDAP search filters.

NOTE: This RFC has been superceded by RFC 2254 (http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/cis-redirect/htbin/rfc/rfc2254.html)

RFC 1823 - The LDAP Application Program Interface (http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/cis-redirect/htbin/rfc/rfc1823.html)

This document defines a C language application program interface to the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). The LDAP API is designed to be powerful, yet simple to use. It defines compatible synchronous and asynchronous interfaces to LDAP to suit a wide variety of applications. This document gives a brief overview of the LDAP model, then an overview of how the API is used by an application program to obtain LDAP information. The API calls are described in detail, followed by an appendix that provides some example code demonstrating the use of the API.

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LDAPv3

RFC 2251 - Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (v3) (http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/cis-redirect/htbin/rfc/rfc2251.html)

The protocol described in this document is designed to provide access to directories supporting the X.500 models, while not incurring the resource requirements of the X.500 Directory Access Protocol (DAP). This protocol is specifically targeted at management applications and browser applications that provide read/write interactive access to directories. When used with a directory supporting the X.500 protocols, it is intended to be a complement to the X.500 DAP.

Key aspects of this version of LDAP are:

All protocol elements of LDAPv2 (RFC 1777) are supported. The protocol is carried directly over TCP or other transport, bypassing much of the session/presentation overhead of X.500 DAP.
Most protocol data elements can be encoded as ordinary strings (for example, Distinguished Names).
Referrals to other servers may be returned.
SASL mechanisms may be used with LDAP to provide association security services.
Attribute values and Distinguished Names have been internationalized through the use of the ISO 10646 character set.
The protocol can be extended to support new operations, and controls may be used to extend existing operations.
Schema is published in the directory for use by clients.

RFC 2252 - Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (v3): Attribute Syntax Definitions (http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/cis-redirect/htbin/rfc/rfc2252.html)

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) requires that the contents of AttributeValue fields in protocol elements be octet strings. This document defines a set of syntaxes for LDAPv3, and the rules by which attribute values of these syntaxes are represented as octet strings for transmission in the LDAP protocol. The syntaxes defined in this document are referenced by this and other documents that define attribute types. This document also defines the set of attribute types which LDAP servers should support.

RFC 2253 - Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (v3): UTF-8 String Representation of Distinguished Names (http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/cis-redirect/htbin/rfc/rfc2253.html)

The X.500 directory uses distinguished names as the primary keys to entries in the directory. Distinguished Names are encoded in ASN.1 in the X.500 Directory protocols. In the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, a string representation of distinguished names is transferred. This specification defines the string format for representing names, which is designed to give a clean representation of commonly used distinguished names, while being able to represent any distinguished name.

RFC 2254 - The String Representation of LDAP Search Filters (http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/cis-redirect/htbin/rfc/rfc2254.html)

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) defines a network representation of a search filter transmitted to an LDAP server. Some applications may find it useful to have a common way of representing these search filters in a human-readable form. This document defines a human-readable string format for representing LDAP search filters.

This document replaces RFC 1960 (http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/cis-redirect/htbin/rfc/rfc1960.html) , extending the string LDAP filter definition to include support for LDAP version 3 extended match filters, and including support for representing the full range of possible LDAP search filters.

RFC 2255 - The LDAP URL Format (http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/cis-redirect/htbin/rfc/rfc2255.html)

This document describes a format for an LDAP Uniform Resource Locator. The format describes an LDAP search operation to perform to retrieve information from an LDAP directory.

This document replaces RFC 1959 (http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/cis-redirect/htbin/rfc/rfc1959.html) . It updates the LDAP URL format for version 3 of LDAP and clarifies how LDAP URLs are resolved. This document also defines an extension mechanism for LDAP URLs, so that future documents can extend their functionality, for example, to provide access to new LDAPv3 extensions as they are defined.

RFC 2256 - A Summary of the X.500(96) User Schema for use with LDAPv3 (http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/cis-redirect/htbin/rfc/rfc2256.html)

This document provides an overview of the attribute types and object classes defined by the ISO and ITU-T committees in the X.500 documents, in particular those intended for use by directory clients. This is the most widely used schema for LDAP/X.500 directories, and many other schema definitions for white pages objects use it as a basis. This document does not cover attributes used for the administration of X.500 directory servers, nor does it include attributes defined by other ISO/ITU-T documents.

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