Originally, directories were intended to provide an alphabetically organized listing of names (usually people's) with a unique informational characteristic for each entry (address, phone number, etc.) Today, in thousands of modern electronic online directories the primary alphabetic classification of directories has long developed into a more complex structure that groups not just people, but a much wider scope of logical or physical entities by a variety of criteria like computers, networks, printers, certificates, etc.

Such entities are called members. They may differ in so many aspects: geographical and logical locations, permissions, and much more. So, to be able to cope with this kind of smaller entity membership classification directories use upper-level entities called groups. However, it is important to understand that any group can also be a member of another group. This explains the fact why almost anything in a directory is actually a member in this or that way.

Group objects could be devided in two types: static and dynamic. Static groups are traditional LDAP groups, that hold a static list of its members (listing members by DN). Dynamic groups are similar to static groups, but they allow users to specify search criteria to be used for evaluating membership to a group. An entry matching any of those search criteria automatically becomes a member.

LDAP Administrator offers a set of powerful wizards and handy property pages to manage, maintain and customize membership and grouping.