As seen throughout this book, many applications are already LDAP-enabled. They utilize LDAP directories for various purposes, user information, authentication/authorization, configuration settings, and so forth. User applications can benefit from the advantages of directories as well. This chapter gives ideas on how to leverage LDAP directories in self-written applications and introduces the various programming interfaces and methods to directory-enable applications.

For example, a company sets up an enterprise LDAP directory for e-mail clients to use to retrieve e-mail addresses. The information in the directory can be used for various other purposes. The payroll application, for example, could use the directory to retrieve employee addresses. Employees may also want to update their own information in the directory. All of these uses require some sort of programming unless the company has bought software that does exactly what is needed. Virtually all applications whether they are written in C++, Java, Visual Basic, etc., can be LDAP-enabled due to the variety of different application interfaces available.

IBM Directory Server provides a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that allow users to search a directory or perform operations, such as additions, modifications, or deletions of directory entries. This part of the book contains some examples of how to use APIs in a C or Java application to search for a specific directory entry or to add a new entry into a directory.