LDAPn

LDAPn is a hypothetical extension of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) intended to address scalability, multi-tenancy, and richer data modeling in directory services. It is not an official standard and, as of today, has no widely adopted specification; discussions about LDAPn appear in academic and vendor contexts as a conceptual framework for next-generation directory services.

Overview: LDAPn preserves the core LDAP client-server model and the DSA operation set, but introduces extended operations and a flexible, runtime-modifiable schema. It supports partitioning of directory data into named contexts for multi-tenant deployments, and it allows richer attribute types, including structured and n-dimensional attributes, with improved validation rules.

Architecture and features: LDAPn envisions pluggable backends, optional multi-master replication, and enhanced search capabilities with advanced indexing. Access control is tightened with policy-based rules and attribute-level ACLs. It provides link or reference attributes to model relationships between objects and supports standardized event and audit streams for compliance.

Interoperability and adoption: Because LDAPn is not standardized, practical adoption has been limited to research projects and vendor prototypes. Interoperability with legacy LDAP deployments is usually possible via gateways or adapters, but feature parity is not guaranteed.

Security and deployment considerations: Security typically relies on transport-layer protections such as TLS (STARTTLS) and SASL-based authentication, plus stronger identity verification and encryption options for sensitive attributes. Operational considerations include schema management, data migration, and performance tuning for larger directories.