There are ten basic types of operations in LDAP:

• Bind — Authenticate a user and change the identity of the client connection.
• Search — Retrieve entries that match a given set of criteria.
• Compare — Determine whether a specified entry has a particular attribute value.
• Add — Create a new entry in the directory.
• Delete — Remove an entry from the directory.
• Modify — Alter the content of an entry in the directory.
• Modify DN — Change the DN of an entry in the directory.
• Unbind — Close the connection to the directory server.
• Abandon — Request that the server stop processing a previously requested operation.
• Extended — Request some other type of processing that isn’t covered by one of the other operation types.

Each of these is described in more detail in its own section. In addition, most types of operations return one or more result messages, and those are described in the LDAP Operation Results section.