The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Access Service enables an application to communicate with an LDAP-compliant directory service or LDAP framework. This service provides support for LDAPv2 and LDAPv3, via the Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI).
Note It is assumed that readers of this document have a basic understanding of LDAP. Consult Internet RFC's 1777, 1778, 1798, 1823, 2251, 2252, 2253, 2254, 2255 and 2256 for more information on LDAP.
The LDAPService class provides the main functionality of this service. It is subclassed from the Service class, and hence provides support for asynchronous access and event handling. Event handling is an LDAPv3 feature. Further support is provided by the classes LDAPRequest, LDAPResponse, and their subclasses: for each major piece of functionality provided by JNDI, there is a subclass of LDAPRequest that contains the data needed to process that piece of functionality; and for every LDAPRequest, there is a corresponding LDAPResponse that encapsulates the data that is returned upon completion of a request.
The LDAP Access Service supports externalization of input and output data via the LDAPRequestFormat and LDAPResponseFormat classes, as follows:
▪ The LDAPRequestFormat class provides a format() method that returns an appropriate subclass of LDAPRequest, depending on the type of externalized data. The LDAPService class can then process this LDAPRequest.
▪ The LDAPResponseFormat class provides an unformat() method that transfers the data returned in an LDAPResponse to an operation data context
The following diagram shows the relationships between the entities involved in the use of the LDAP Access Service:
