1.1 Glossary

This document uses the following terms:

Active Directory: The Windows implementation of a general-purpose directory service, which uses LDAP as its primary access protocol. Active Directory stores information about a variety of objects in the network such as user accounts, computer accounts, groups, and all related credential information used by Kerberos [MS-KILE]. Active Directory is either deployed as Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) or Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS), which are both described in [MS-ADOD]: Active Directory Protocols Overview.

Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS): A directory service (DS) implemented by a domain controller (DC). The DS provides a data store for objects that is distributed across multiple DCs. The DCs interoperate as peers to ensure that a local change to an object replicates correctly across DCs.  AD DS is a deployment of Active Directory [MS-ADTS].

Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS): A directory service (DS) implemented by a domain controller (DC). AD LDS is a deployment of Active Directory [MS-ADTS]. The most significant difference between AD LDS and Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) is that AD LDS does not host domain naming contexts (domain NCs). A server can host multiple AD LDS DCs. Each DC is an independent AD LDS instance, with its own independent state. AD LDS can be run as an operating system DS or as a directory service provided by a standalone application (Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM)).

Active Directory Web Services (ADWS): Provides a web service interface to Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) and Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) instances.

application naming context (application NC): A specific type of naming context (NC), or an instance of that type, that supports only full replicas (no partial replicas). An application NC cannot contain security principal objects in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), but can contain security principal objects in Active Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS). A forest can have zero or more application NCs in either AD DS or AD LDS. An application NC can contain dynamic objects. Application NCs do not appear in the global catalog (GC). The root of an application NC is an object of class domainDNS.

attribute: A characteristic of some object or entity, typically encoded as a name/value pair.

authenticable principal: In AD DS, a directory object of class user or of a class derived from user. In AD LDS, a directory object of a class that statically links to the msDS-BindableObject auxiliary class. See [MS-ADTS] section 3.1.1.2.4.

child domain: A domain that is a member of a domain tree but is not the root domain of the domain tree.

computer object: An object of class computer. A computer object is a security principal object; the principal is the operating system running on the computer. The shared secret allows the operating system running on the computer to authenticate itself independently of any user running on the system. See security principal.

configuration naming context (config NC): A specific type of naming context (NC), or an instance of that type, that contains configuration information. In Active Directory, a single config NC is shared among all domain controllers (DCs) in the forest. A config NC cannot contain security principal objects.

crossRef object: An object residing in the partitions container of the config NC that describes the properties of a naming context (NC), such as its domain naming service name, operational settings, and so on.

directory instance: The directory service referred to by the SOAP header in the Active Directory Web Services: Custom Action Protocol custom action XML operation, which is the target of the custom action request. This directory service is assumed to be running locally on the server. This can be an Active Directory directory service instance, or an Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services instance (one of possibly many). For more detail on the format of the SOAP header, see [MS-ADDM] section 2.5.1.

directory object: A Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) object, as specified in [RFC2251], that is a specialization of an object.

directory service (DS): A service that stores and organizes information about a computer network's users and network shares, and that allows network administrators to manage users' access to the shares. See also Active Directory.

distinguished name (DN): A name that uniquely identifies an object by using the relative distinguished name (RDN) for the object, and the names of container objects and domains that contain the object. The distinguished name (DN) identifies the object and its location in a tree.

domain: A set of users and computers sharing a common namespace and management infrastructure. At least one computer member of the set must act as a domain controller (DC) and host a member list that identifies all members of the domain, as well as optionally hosting the Active Directory service. The domain controller provides authentication of members, creating a unit of trust for its members. Each domain has an identifier that is shared among its members. For more information, see [MS-AUTHSOD] section 1.1.1.5 and [MS-ADTS].

domain controller (DC): The service, running on a server, that implements Active Directory, or the server hosting this service. The service hosts the data store for objects and interoperates with other DCs to ensure that a local change to an object replicates correctly across all DCs. When Active Directory is operating as Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), the DC contains full NC replicas of the configuration naming context (config NC), schema naming context (schema NC), and one of the domain NCs in its forest. If the AD DS DC is a global catalog server (GC server), it contains partial NC replicas of the remaining domain NCs in its forest. For more information, see [MS-AUTHSOD] section 1.1.1.5.2 and [MS-ADTS]. When Active Directory is operating as Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS), several AD LDS DCs can run on one server. When Active Directory is operating as AD DS, only one AD DS DC can run on one server. However, several AD LDS DCs can coexist with one AD DS DC on one server. The AD LDS DC contains full NC replicas of the config NC and the schema NC in its forest. The domain controller is the server side of Authentication Protocol Domain Support [MS-APDS].

domain local group: An Active Directory group that allows user objects, global groups, and universal groups from any domain as members. It can additionally include, and be a member of, other domain local groups from within its domain. A group object g is a domain local group if and only if GROUP_TYPE_RESOURCE_GROUP is present in g!groupType; see [MS-ADTS] section 2.2.12, "Group Type Flags". A security-enabled domain local group is valid for inclusion within access control lists (ACLs) from its own domain. If a domain is in mixed mode, then a security-enabled domain local group in that domain allows only user objects as members.

Domain Name System (DNS): A hierarchical, distributed database that contains mappings of domain names to various types of data, such as IP addresses. DNS enables the location of computers and services by user-friendly names, and it also enables the discovery of other information stored in the database.

domain naming context (domain NC): A naming context (NC) whose replicas are able to contain security principal objects. No other NC replica can contain security principal objects. The distinguished name (DN) of a domain NC takes the form "dc=n1,dc=n2, ... dc=nk" where each "ni" satisfies the syntactic requirements of a DNS name component. For more information, see [RFC1034]. Such a DN corresponds to the domain naming service name:  "n1.n2. ... .nk". This is the domain naming service name of the domain NC. Domain NCs appear in the global catalog (GC). A forest has one or more domain NCs. The root of a domain NC is an object of class domainDns.

domain tree: A set of domains that are arranged hierarchically, typically following an accompanying DNS hierarchy, with trusts between parents and children. An example domain tree might be a.example.com, b.example.com, and example.com; domain A and domain B each trust example.com but do not trust each other directly. They will have a transitive trust relationship through example.com.

endpoint: In the context of a web service, a network target to which a SOAP message can be addressed. See [WSADDR].

flexible single master operation (FSMO): A read or update operation on a naming context (NC), such that the operation must be performed on the single designated master replica of that NC. The master replica designation is "flexible" because it can be changed without losing the consistency gained from having a single master. This term, pronounced "fizmo", is never used alone; see also FSMO role, FSMO role owner, and FSMO object.

forest: In the Active Directory directory service, a forest is a set of naming contexts (NCs) consisting of one schema NC, one config NC, and one or more domain NCs. Because a set of NCs can be arranged into a tree structure, a forest is also a set of one or several trees of NCs.

forest functional level: A specification of functionality available in a forest. It must be less than or equal to the domain controller (DC) functional level of every DC in the forest. See [MS-ADTS] section 6.1.4.4 for information on how the forest functional level is determined.

FSMO role: A set of objects that can be updated in only one naming context (NC) replica (the FSMO role owner's replica) at any given time. For more information, see [MS-ADTS] section 3.1.1.1.11. See also FSMO role owner.

fully qualified domain name (FQDN): (1) An unambiguous domain name that gives an absolute location in the Domain Name System's (DNS) hierarchy tree, as defined in [RFC1035] section 3.1 and [RFC2181] section 11.

(2) In Active Directory, a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) (1) that identifies a domain.

global catalog (GC): A unified partial view of multiple naming contexts (NCs) in a distributed partitioned directory. The Active Directory directory service GC is implemented by GC servers. The definition of global catalog is specified in [MS-ADTS] section 3.1.1.1.8.

global group: An Active Directory group that allows user objects from its own domain and global groups from its own domain as members. Also called domain global group. Universal groups can contain global groups. A group object g is a global group if and only if GROUP_TYPE_ACCOUNT_GROUP is present in g! groupType; see [MS-ADTS] section 2.2.12, "Group Type Flags". A global group that is also a security-enabled group is valid for inclusion within ACLs anywhere in the forest. If a domain is in mixed mode, then a global group in that domain that is also a security-enabled group allows only user object as members. See also domain local group, security-enabled group.

globally unique identifier (GUID): A term used interchangeably with universally unique identifier (UUID) in Microsoft protocol technical documents (TDs). Interchanging the usage of these terms does not imply or require a specific algorithm or mechanism to generate the value. Specifically, the use of this term does not imply or require that the algorithms described in [RFC4122] or [C706] must be used for generating the GUID. See also universally unique identifier (UUID).

group: A collection of objects that can be treated as a whole.

group object: In Active Directory, a group object has an object class group. A group has a forward link attribute member; the values of this attribute either represent elements of the group (for example, objects of class user or computer) or subsets of the group (objects of class group). The representation of group subsets is called "nested group membership". The back link attribute memberOf enables navigation from group members to the groups containing them. Some groups represent groups of security principals and some do not and are, for instance, used to represent email distribution lists.

Group Policy Object (GPO): A collection of administrator-defined specifications of the policy settings that can be applied to groups of computers in a domain. Each GPO includes two elements: an object that resides in the Active Directory for the domain, and a corresponding file system subdirectory that resides on the sysvol DFS share of the Group Policy server for the domain.

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP): The primary access protocol for Active Directory. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is an industry-standard protocol, established by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which allows users to query and update information in a directory service (DS), as described in [MS-ADTS]. The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol can be either version 2 [RFC1777] or version 3 [RFC3377].

naming context (NC): An NC is a set of objects organized as a tree. It is referenced by a DSName. The DN of the DSName is the distinguishedName attribute of the tree root. The GUID of the DSName is the objectGUID attribute of the tree root. The security identifier (SID) of the DSName, if present, is the objectSid attribute of the tree root; for Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), the SID is present if and only if the NC is a domain naming context (domain NC). Active Directory supports organizing several NCs into a tree structure.

NetBIOS name: A 16-byte address that is used to identify a NetBIOS resource on the network. For more information, see [RFC1001] and [RFC1002].

non-authenticable principal: A reference identifying a directory object that is not an authenticable principal object.

nonexistent naming context (nonexistent NC): A reference that does not identify an NC in the specified directory instance.

nonexistent principal: A reference that does not identify a security principal in the specified directory instance.

non-group principal: A reference identifying a directory object that is not a group object.

non-security principal: A reference identifying a directory object that is not a security principal object.

non-user principal: A reference identifying a directory object that is not a user object.

nTDSDSA object: An object of class nTDSDSA that is always located in the configuration naming context (config NC). This object represents a domain controller (DC) in the forest. See [MS-ADTS] section 6.1.1.2.2.1.2.1.1.

object class: A predicate defined on objects that constrains their attributes. Also an identifier for such a predicate.

object class inheritance: The process of defining one object class in terms of its variations from an existing object class. The may-have, must-have, and possible superiors restrictions of an object class are all inherited.

parent domain: A domain that is part of a domain tree and has child domains is a parent of those child domains.

primary group: The group object ([MS-ADSC] section 2.53) identified by the primaryGroupID attribute ([MS-ADA3] section 2.120) of a user object ([MS-ADSC] section 2.263). The primary group's objectSid attribute ([MS-ADA3] section 2.45) equals the user's objectSid, with its relative identifier (RID) portion replaced by the primaryGroupID value. The user is considered a member of its primary group.

principal: An authenticated entity that initiates a message or channel in a distributed system.

read-only domain controller (RODC): A domain controller (DC) that does not accept originating updates. Additionally, an RODC does not perform outbound replication. An RODC cannot be the primary domain controller (PDC) for its domain.

relative identifier (RID): The last item in the series of SubAuthority values in a security identifier (SID) [SIDD]. It distinguishes one account or group from all other accounts and groups in the domain. No two accounts or groups in any domain share the same RID.

root directory system agent-specific entry (rootDSE): The logical root of a directory server, whose distinguished name (DN) is the empty string. In the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), the rootDSE is a nameless entry (a DN with an empty string) containing the configuration status of the server. Access to this entry is typically available to unauthenticated clients. The rootDSE contains attributes that represent the features, capabilities, and extensions provided by the particular server.

root domain: The unique domain naming contexts (domain NCs) of an Active Directory forest that is the parent of the forest's config NC. The config NC's relative distinguished name (RDN) is "cn=Configuration" relative to the root object of the root domain. The root domain is the domain that is created first in a forest.

schema naming context (schema NC): A specific type of naming context (NC) or an instance of that type. A forest has a single schema NC, which is replicated to each domain controller (DC) in the forest. No other NC replicas can contain these objects. Each attribute and class in the forest's schema is represented as a corresponding object in the forest's schema NC. A schema NC cannot contain security principal objects.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL): A security protocol that supports confidentiality and integrity of messages in client and server applications that communicate over open networks. SSL supports server and, optionally, client authentication using X.509 certificates [X509] and [RFC5280]. SSL is superseded by Transport Layer Security (TLS). TLS version 1.0 is based on SSL version 3.0 [SSL3].

security identifier (SID): An identifier for security principals that is used to identify an account or a group. Conceptually, the SID is composed of an account authority portion (typically a domain) and a smaller integer representing an identity relative to the account authority, termed the relative identifier (RID). The SID format is specified in [MS-DTYP] section 2.4.2; a string representation of SIDs is specified in [MS-DTYP] section 2.4.2 and [MS-AZOD] section 1.1.1.2.

security principal: A unique entity identifiable through cryptographic means by at least one key. A security principal often corresponds to a human user but can also be a service offering a resource to other security principals. Sometimes referred to simply as a "principal".

security-enabled group: A group object with GROUP_TYPE_SECURITY_ENABLED present in its groupType attribute. Only security-enabled groups are added to a security context. See also group object.

site: A collection of one or more well-connected (reliable and fast) TCP/IP subnets. By defining sites (represented by site objects) an administrator can optimize both Active Directory access and Active Directory replication with respect to the physical network. When users log in, Active Directory clients find domain controllers (DCs) that are in the same site as the user, or near the same site if there is no DC in the site. See also Knowledge Consistency Checker (KCC). For more information, see [MS-ADTS].

snapshot store instance: A read-only copy of an Active Directory Domain Services instance or an Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services instance at some point in time.

SOAP: A lightweight protocol for exchanging structured information in a decentralized, distributed environment. SOAP uses XML technologies to define an extensible messaging framework, which provides a message construct that can be exchanged over a variety of underlying protocols. The framework has been designed to be independent of any particular programming model and other implementation-specific semantics. SOAP 1.2 supersedes SOAP 1.1. See [SOAP1.2-1/2003].

SOAP action: The HTTP request header field used to indicate the intent of the SOAP request, using a URI value. See [SOAP1.1] section 6.1.1 for more information.

SOAP fault: A container for error and status information within a SOAP message. See [SOAP1.2-1/2007] section 5.4 for more information.

SOAP fault code: The algorithmic mechanism for identifying a SOAP fault. See [SOAP1.2-1/2007] section 5.6 for more information.

SOAP fault detail: A string containing a human-readable explanation of a SOAP fault, which is not intended for algorithmic processing. See [SOAP1.2-1/2007] section 5.4.5 for more information.

SOAP fault subcode: An element of a SOAP fault, defined in [SOAP1.2-1/2003].

SOAP header: A mechanism for implementing extensions to a SOAP message in a decentralized manner without prior agreement between the communicating parties. See [SOAP1.2-1/2007] section 5.2 for more information.

SOAP message: An XML document consisting of a mandatory SOAP envelope, an optional SOAP header, and a mandatory SOAP body. See [SOAP1.2-1/2007] section 5 for more information.

SOAP mustUnderstand attribute: A global, Boolean attribute that is used to indicate whether a header entry is mandatory or optional for the recipient to process. See [SOAP1.2-1/2007] section 5.2.3 for more information.

Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): A string that identifies a resource. The URI is an addressing mechanism defined in Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax [RFC3986].

Uniform Resource Locator (URL): A string of characters in a standardized format that identifies a document or resource on the World Wide Web. The format is as specified in [RFC1738].

universal group: An Active Directory group that allows user objects, global groups, and universal groups from anywhere in the forest as members. A group object g is a universal group if and only if GROUP_TYPE_UNIVERSAL_GROUP is present in g! groupType. A security-enabled universal group is valid for inclusion within ACLs anywhere in the forest. If a domain is in mixed mode, then a universal group cannot be created in that domain. See also domain local group, security-enabled group.

user object: An object of class user. A user object is a security principal object; the principal is a person or service entity running on the computer. The shared secret allows the person or service entity to authenticate itself, as described in ([MS-AUTHSOD] section 1.1.1.1).

Web Services Description Language (WSDL): An XML format for describing network services as a set of endpoints that operate on messages that contain either document-oriented or procedure-oriented information. The operations and messages are described abstractly and are bound to a concrete network protocol and message format in order to define an endpoint. Related concrete endpoints are combined into abstract endpoints, which describe a network service. WSDL is extensible, which allows the description of endpoints and their messages regardless of the message formats or network protocols that are used.

WSDL message: An abstract, typed definition of the data that is communicated during a WSDL operation [WSDL]. Also, an element that describes the data being exchanged between web service providers and clients.

WSDL operation: A single action or function of a web service. The execution of a WSDL operation typically requires the exchange of messages between the service requestor and the service provider.

WSDL port type: A named set of logically-related, abstract Web Services Description Language (WSDL) operations and messages.

XML: The Extensible Markup Language, as described in [XML1.0].

XML namespace: A collection of names that is used to identify elements, types, and attributes in XML documents identified in a URI reference [RFC3986]. A combination of XML namespace and local name allows XML documents to use elements, types, and attributes that have the same names but come from different sources. For more information, see [XMLNS-2ED].

XML schema: A description of a type of XML document that is typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, in addition to the basic syntax constraints that are imposed by XML itself. An XML schema provides a view of a document type at a relatively high level of abstraction.

MAY, SHOULD, MUST, SHOULD NOT, MUST NOT: These terms (in all caps) are used as defined in [RFC2119]. All statements of optional behavior use either MAY, SHOULD, or SHOULD NOT.