OpenLDAP

The OpenLDAP project is an open-standard protocol used for accessing X.500 directory services. This protocol runs over Internet transport protocols like TCP, and it offers an alternative to the X.500 Directory Access Protocol (DAP) used on the Internet. LDAP stands out as a lightweight alternative that uses TCP/IP stack instead of the complex OSI stack. The protocol is simpler, so it uses most attribute values and protocol items as textual strings, making it easier to implement for clients.

The OpenLDAP Project has released Software 2.3. This is a suite of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (v3) servers, clients, utilities, and development tools. The release comes with significant enhancements, including updated slapd overlays that make it easy to interface with LDAP-sync Engine.

This version also offers many access control enhancements, including the "don't disclose on error" capability. It comes with LDAPv3 extensions that include LDAP Password Policy, LDAP Component Matching (requires OpenLDAP snacc), and LDAP Modify Increment.

The release comprises several major components, including the slapd that's a stand-alone LDAP directory server. Slurpd is a stand-alone LDAP replication server, and it comes with an LDAP client library called lldap. Also, the lightweight BER/DER encoding/decoding library called llber, LDIF tools used for data conversion, and LDAP tools that provide a collection of command line LDAP utilities are part of the package. The admin guide and manual pages are documentation associated with the tools, and it contains ASN.1 development tools for OpenLDAP (SNACC).

Some contributions are part of the OpenLDAP project, including LDAPC++, a LDAP C++ SDK. This version comes with various slapd modules and slapi plugins which provide added features to the project.