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.