• Article

Terms and Concepts

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 will reach end of support on January 9, 2018. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

  • Active Directory

    The directory service that stores information about objects on a network and makes this information available to users and network administrators.

  • Class

    In Active Directory, characteristics of an object and the type of information an object can hold. For each object class, the schema defines what attributes an instance of the class must have and what additional attributes it might have.

  • Domain

    A group of computers that are part of a network and share a common directory database. A domain is administered as a unit with common rules and procedures. Each domain has a unique name. An Active Directory domain is a collection of computers defined by the administrator of a network that is based on the Microsoft Windows® operating system. These computers share a common directory database, security policies, and security relationships with other domains. An Active Directory domain provides access to the centralized user accounts and group accounts maintained by the domain administrator.

  • Domain controller

    A server in an Active Directory forest that contains a writable copy of the Active Directory database, participates in Active Directory replication, and controls access to network resources.

  • Forest

    A collection of one or more Windows domains that share a common schema, configuration, and global catalog, and are linked with two-way transitive trusts.

  • Forest root domain

    The beginning of the DNS (Domain Name System) namespace. In Active Directory, the initial domain in an Active Directory tree. Also the initial domain of a forest.

  • Global catalog server

    A directory database that applications and clients can query to locate any object in a forest. The global catalog is hosted on one or more domain controllers in the forest. It contains a partial replica of every domain directory partition in the forest. These partial replicas include replicas of every object in the forest, as follows:

    • The attributes most frequently used in search operations.

    • The attributes required to locate a full replica of the object.

  • Global groups

    A security or distribution group that can contain users, groups, and computers from its own domain as members. Global security groups can be granted rights and permissions on resources in any domain in its forest.

  • Schema

    The set of definitions for the universe of objects that can be stored in a directory. For each object class, the schema defines which attributes an instance of the class must have, which additional attributes it can have, and which other object classes can be its parent object class.

  • Universal group

    A security or distribution group that can contain users, groups, and computers from any domain in its forest as members. Universal security groups can be granted rights and permissions on resources in any domain in the forest.