The Domino® Directory

The Domino® Directory, which some previous releases referred to as the Public Address Book or Name and Address Book, is a database that Domino® creates automatically on every server. The Domino® Directory is a directory of information about users, servers, and groups, as well as custom entries you may add. Registering users and servers in a domain automatically creates corresponding Person documents and Server documents in the Domino® Directory for the domain. These documents contain detailed information about each user and server.

The Domino® Directory is also a tool that administrators use to manage the Domino® system. For example, administrators create documents in the Domino® Directory to connect servers for replication or mail routing, to schedule server tasks, and so on.

When a server runs the LDAP service, the Domino® Directory is accessible through the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).

Typically, a Domino® Directory is associated with a Domino® domain. When you set up the first server in a Domino® domain, Domino® automatically creates the Domino® Directory database and gives it the file name NAMES.NSF. When you add a new server to the domain, Domino® automatically creates a replica of the Domino® Directory on the new server.

You can also create a Domino® Directory manually from the PUBNAMES.NTF template and use it as a secondary directory to store, for example, entries for your Internet users.

To optimize its performance, the Domino® Directory has these database properties enabled by default:

• Optimize document table map to improve the performance of small view updates -- for example, updates of the Connections view.
• Don't maintain unread marks to improve database performance and reduce the size of the database.