RFC 2255 (rfc2255) - Page 2 of 10

The LDAP URL Format

RFC 2255                    LDAP URL Format                December 1997


   Readers are hereby warned that until mandatory authentication
   mechanisms are standardized, clients and servers written according to
   this specification which make use of update functionality are
   UNLIKELY TO INTEROPERATE, or MAY INTEROPERATE ONLY IF AUTHENTICATION
   IS REDUCED TO AN UNACCEPTABLY WEAK LEVEL.

   Implementors are hereby discouraged from deploying LDAPv3 clients or
   servers which implement the update functionality, until a Proposed
   Standard for mandatory authentication in LDAPv3 has been approved and
   published as an RFC.

2. Abstract

   LDAP is the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, defined in [1],
   [2] and [3].  This document describes a format for an LDAP Uniform
   Resource Locator.  The format describes an LDAP search operation to
   perform to retrieve information from an LDAP directory. This document
   replaces RFC 1959. It updates the LDAP URL format for version 3 of
   LDAP and clarifies how LDAP URLs are resolved. This document also
   defines an extension mechanism for LDAP URLs, so that future
   documents can extend their functionality, for example, to provide
   access to new LDAPv3 extensions as they are defined.

   The key words "MUST", "MAY", and "SHOULD" used in this document are
   to be interpreted as described in [6].


























Howes & Smith               Standards Track