The directory becomes the mechanism that clients, which can be users or applications, use to locate resources and information by searching on characteristics of those entries, referred to as attributes. Entries, for example, may describe a network resource, such as a printer or a Web page, an application on the network, or a person. Information in the directory is accessed by queries.
Applications use the directory to find resources and authorize usage based on the user profile.
The replication comes as part of the directory. Application developers need to recognize the implications of this replication as they decide which information to place in the directory and how frequently it is likely to change. Frequent changes force frequent replication, which can swamp the network. However, some developers have latched on to directories as essentially free, replicated databases, although they have shortcomings when it comes to ensuring transaction integrity. As databases, directories have an object-oriented schema that allows the data to be organized into a tree hierarchy rather than the rows and columns and tables of a relational database.