New devices are being purchased and added on a daily basis and existing devices continue to be networked. Directory services provide a means for locating resources, and authorized users of those resources throughout the UF community and the Internet. The X.500 directory services standard provides definitions for development of software to implement such services. Directory services organize resources into a hierarchical structure or tree. The tree contains entries which may be containers or leaves.
Containers are objects that contain other objects.
A leaf is an object that does not contain any other objects. An example might be a printer leaf object. The printer leaf object represents a particular network printer. By examining the object we might learn where the printer is located, who manages it, who is authorized to print to it, and its operating hours. Leaf objects are used to denote entries that are not subdivided further, such as users, printers, disk volumes and computers.