X.500 Data Models
The primary concept of X.500 is that there is a single Directory Information Tree (DIT), a hierarchical organization of entries which are distributed across one or more servers, called Directory System Agents (DSA). An entry consists of a set of attributes, each attribute with one or more values. Each entry has a unique Distinguished Name, formed by combining its Relative Distinguished Name (RDN), one or more attributes of the entry itself, and the RDNs of each of the superior entries up to the root of the DIT. As LDAP implements a very similar data model to that of X.500, there is further description of the data model in the article on LDAP.
X.520 and X.521 together provide a definition of a set of attributes and object classes to be used for representing people and organizations as entries in the DIT. They are one of the most widely deployed white pages schema.
X.509, the portion of the standard providing for an authentication framework, is now also widely used outside of the X.500 directory protocols. It specifies a standard format for public-key certificates.
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