Information technology — Open Systems Interconnection — The Directory — Part 3: Abstract service definition

ISO/IEC 9594 has been produced to facilitate the interconnection of information processing systems to provide directory services. A set of such systems, together with the directory information that they hold, can be viewed as an integrated whole, called the Directory. The information held by the Directory, collectively known as the Directory Information Base (DIB), is typically used to facilitate communication between, with or about objects such as application entities, people, terminals and distribution lists.

ISO/IEC 9594-3:2014 defines in an abstract way the externally visible services provided by the Directory, including bind and unbind operations, read operations, search operations, modify operations, operations to support password policies and operations to support interworking with the lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP). It also defines errors.