Inventions on Data Searching in LDAP - A TRIZ Based Analysis

Abstract

Searching is one of the most basic operation provided by an LDAP server. LDAP offers a rich set of searching capabilities. The search operation allows a client to request the server to perform a search on its behalf. The search operation locates specific users or services in the directory tree. The LDAP server executes the search (or update) command and returns a response to the client. Upon receipt of a Search Request, a server will perform the necessary search of the DIT. The server will then return to the client a sequence of responses in separate LDAP messages. The search responses may contain SearchResultEntry (the attributes and values satisfying the search conditions), SearchResultReference (URL of the referral servers), ExtendedResponse or SearchResultDone (success or failure of search operation) data types. Faster searching increases server load and network traffic. An overloaded server and congested network slows down the performance. This makes a loop of contradiction. It is necessary to reduce server load and reduce network traffic while increasing speed of searching. This article is a TRIZ based study of patents on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) data Searching. Data searching is one of the most important operations of LDAP. The objective of this article is to find the major concerns in LDAP data searching, find the IFR and trends of LDAP data searching and predict the future lines of inventions on LDAP searching. This article is a part of the main study made on LDAP based on 60 patents selected from US patent database.