Asp.net membership providers

Asp.Net uses a provider model design pattern - a different back-end provider can be "plugged in" to change the mechanism used to save and retrieve data. .Net abstracts the actual storage mechanism from the classes that manipulate the data. The provider class is the one that stores the data on behalf of the other classes that manipulate the data. For example, the membership class uses a secondary class called a membership provider that actually knows the details of a particular data store and implements all the supporting logic to read and write data to/from int. Two built in providers are available for the membership system. One is the SqlMembershipProvider and another is the ActiveDirectoryMemberhsipProvider. This uses the LDAP proto col to communicate with the PDC server.  This protocol is used for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over Internet protocol. Directory Services provide a hierarchical organization of members. LDAPv3 allows the use of Transport Layer Security for a secure connection. Another alternative mechanism of securing LDAP connection is the SSL Tunnel but this is now retired with LDAPv2. LDAP supports operations such as Bind, Search, Compare, Add, Delete, Modify, Abandon, Extend and Unbind. LDAP itself is a binary protocol and entries are specified with the LDAP data interchange format.