What are the differences between LDAP and Active Directory?

active-directory ldap
boingboing picture boingboing · Mar 19, 2009 · Viewed 855.8k times · Source

What are the differences between LDAP and Active Directory?

Answer

JohnFx picture JohnFx · Mar 19, 2009

Active Directory is a database based system that provides authentication, directory, policy, and other services in a Windows environment

LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is an application protocol for querying and modifying items in directory service providers like Active Directory, which supports a form of LDAP.

Short answer: AD is a directory services database, and LDAP is one of the protocols you can use to talk to it.

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