Overview of Microsoft Active Directory Support

Describes how Microsoft Active Directory is used as an LDAP directory server by Oracle Database.

• About Microsoft Active Directory
  Active Directory is the LDAP-compliant directory server included with Windows server operating systems.
• About Accessing Active Directory
  When using Oracle features that support Active Directory, ensure that the Active Directory computer can be successfully reached using all possible TCP/IP host name forms to reach the domain controller.

About Microsoft Active Directory

Active Directory is the LDAP-compliant directory server included with Windows server operating systems.

Active Directory stores all Windows operating system information, including users, groups, and policies. Active Directory also stores information about network resources (such as databases) and makes this information available to application users and network administrators. Active Directory enables users to access network resources with a single login. The scope of Active Directory can range from storing all the resources of a small computer network to storing all the resources of several wide areas networks (WANs).

About Accessing Active Directory

When using Oracle features that support Active Directory, ensure that the Active Directory computer can be successfully reached using all possible TCP/IP host name forms to reach the domain controller.

For example, if the host name of the domain controller is server1 in the domain example.com, then ensure that you can ping that computer using all of the following:

• server1.example.com

• example.com

• server1

Active Directory often issues referrals back to itself in one or more of these forms, depending upon the operation being performed. If any of the forms cannot reach the Active Directory computer, then some LDAP operations may fail.