When you have a large user base using multiple services across the organization, a centralized authentication service becomes a need rather than a luxury. It becomes necessary to quickly add new user accounts across multiple services when a new user comes in, and deactivate the respective access tokens when a user leaves the organization. A centralized authentication service enables you to quickly respond by updating the user database on a single central server.
Various different services are available to set up centralized authentication. In this chapter, we will learn how to set up a centralized authentication service using a Lightweight Directory access Protocol (LDAP). A directory is a special database designed specifically for high volume lookups. LDAP directories are tree-based data structures, also known as Directory Information Trees (DIT). Each node in a tree contains a unique entry with its own set of attributes.
LDAP is specifically designed for high volume read systems...