What is LDAP

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP): An open industry-standard protocol for accessing and maintaining directory services; the most popular open-source alternative to the DAP

LDAP Entry: A collection of information that’s used to describe something dn = Distinguished name CN = common name OU = organizational unit or group DC = domain component

The takeaway here is that LDAP notation is used for ​entries in directory services to describe attributes using values.