Linux.com

The real beauty of LDAP is that its extensible and scales very well. Any attributes can be added to a schema to help identify and classify all manners of data about users. Things like employee classification, start date, salary information, physical address or location, credentials, and other data can be contained in an LDAP record. Its much much more than just an authentication system, although it does a good job with that too. Its also not UDP based (like YP) and easily encapsulated in SSL/TLS. Not that I mind YP, its great for single-site shops where unix permission sets need to be exchanged easily. For anything larger, or where other non-authentication data is also needed, LDAP is definitely the way to go.

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