The second aspect is representation of service information in an LDAP directory. The recommended representation simplifies interoperability with SLP by allowing SLP directory agents to backend into LDAP directory servers. Kempf, et al. They can easily be generated, transmitted, read by humans and parsed by programs, as it is a string based syntax with required comments. These directories serve to store information about many types of entities.
Network services are an example of one such entity.
Kempf, et al. Interoperability between SLP and LDAP is important so clients using one protocol derive benefit from services registered through the other. The reverse may not be true. If the LDAP schema contains attributes with unrecognized or complex syntaxes, the translation may be difficult or impossible. In addition, to foster complete bidirectionality, the mapping must follow a very specific representation in its DESC attributes.