Computer Dictionary of Information Technology

Netware Directory Services

(NDS) Novell, Inc.'s directory services for Netware, Windows NT, and Unix. The NDS directory represents each network resource (user, hardware, or application) as an object of a certain class, where each class has certain properties. For example, User and Print Server are object classes and a user has over 80 properties such as name, login, password, department, and title.

The directory is hierarchical, divided into branches by rules of containment. A given object can only belong to a given container (or branch). The rules governing classes, properties and, rules of containment are known as the schema.