Microsoft late Wednesday night shipped the first public beta of its Active Directory "light" and will release the final code of the application-specific directory by the end of the month, according to company officials.
Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) is designed to be a stand-alone version of the directory dedicated to a single application and maintained separate from a corporation"s core Active Directory. ADAM is based on the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and is an alternative to the standard full install of Active Directory, which is known as a network operating system (NOS) directory because of its tie-in with the Windows server operating system.
ADAM will provide corporate users a directory for Web-based and other applications and a place to store data specific to those applications so it cannot compromise the security or stability of their core corporate directory. While ADAM is deployed independent of the NOS directory it can tap into user authentication services offered by the NOS Active Directory or NT 4.0"s NTLM technology.