LEX - The LDAP Explorer is a GUI based administration tool running on windows platforms, which is able to browse and manage LDAP directory systems. For the LEX user, the look and feel while working with the directory structure is very similar to the windows file explorer. LEX isn't just another LDAP browser, in fact it's an full featured LDAP client for directory services adminstration.
LEX supports the following LDAPv2 / LDAPv3 directory systems:
LEX comes with the following options according to the connection to an LDAP server (Bind-Operation):
LEX performs an evaluation of the LDAP schema for the mentioned server types. This happens whenever the tool connects to an LDAP server. Therefore LEX can display LDAP attributes which are not visible in simple LDAP requests (operational attributes). Object attributes which have a more complex syntax can be displayed and edited in customized dialogs (for example date and time values or access control lists).
LEX can edit objects and attributes - with special editors which are customized for the regarding data type and attribute syntax. If you want to generally avoid unintentional write access to the directory, you can configure LEX to operate in a ReadOnly mode.
The following data types are editable with customized dialogs:
Subtree Rename and Move: LEX can move and rename whole directory subtrees, even if the regarding directory service does not support such operations on non-leaf objects. This is done by cloning the underlying container structure and move all the regarding leaf objects into the cloned subtree.
Multi-Object Edit: LEX enables the user to choose several
different objects from the current object list and edit their attributes
simultaneously. Attributes can be built up based on other existing attributes
here. An example: You could set the display name of many users to the new
value "surname, given name" in one single step. Or you can set
the email address of al recipients to "givenName.surname@example.com" in
one single step. You can also set or remove single bits on numeric attributes for multiple objects.
Attribute Copy and Paste: With LEX, you can set attributes of an object according to the values of another object - very easy with the copy and paste functions which are implemented for objects and their attributes. Group memberships could be copied this way - the user can choose whether such multi valued attributes shall be merged into the existing value list or if the existing list shall be replaced by the copied values. from the clipboard.
Objectclass extension: You can easily add new object classes to existing objects.
Edit Dialogs: All dialogs in which object attributes are displayed and edited are non-modal.
Export formats: LDIF, CSV, XML, XLS
Import formats: LDIF
LEX comes with different search operations:
The Filter Factory enables the LEX user to built even complex LDAP with
nested boolean structures with a comfortable graphical user interface. Filter
can be saved and loaded easily.
Specific editors help building sinlge filter elements even for complex datatypes (like date and time values) or for bit fields/flags (for example filters which search for single bits in userAccountControl attributes in AD environments).
Attributes can be used for filter building with their current values directly from the object view with context menu options.
LEX comes with predefined important LDAP filters.
Filters which contain date and time values can be stored in a time-relative manner ("All users which didn't log on for the last six months").
All dialogs in which LDAP filters are displayed and edited are non-modal.
LEX 1.5.000 comes with a new visualization technique called cushion treemaps to provide you with a single grafic picture of the entire contents of your directory hierarchy or any sub container in your directory tree. When you are maintain large LDAP directory environments, this visualization lets you quickly identify the containers or organizational units with the most objects in it. Additionally, you can easily see what kind of objects are stored in which containers. This visualization technique called cushion treemaps is used in some popular admin tools for large file systems, like KDIRSTAT, SEQUOIAVIEW or WINDIRSTAT.
The Observation Factory can observe in "real time" an object on multiple LDAP servers simultaneously . This is e.g. very useful if you want to have a closer look at the process of a directory replication. You can monitor an object or important attributes of an object in the Observation Factory so that you can see exactly when and where the appropriate changes were made to the directory data.
The Pipe Factory enables you to add your own scripts or applications as a kind of plug in into LEX. With a pipe specification, the pipe script/program can be launched from the context menu of any object. LEX passes the Distinguished Name (the LDAP path) of the regarding object as a parameter to the pipe.
Active Directory objects which are placed in the hidden Deleted Objects container can be easily browsed and salvaged with the LEX LDAP browser. You can reanimate AD object tombstones in 'old' Windows 2003 / Windows 2008 environments, or you can do a complete object restore with the AD Recycle Bin feature of Windows 2008 R2 (and newer DCs).
LEX offers the possibility to compare any pair of directory object with each other. In the comparison display, all attribute values are displayed in a dual difference list, even multi valued attributes (for example group memberships) are compared and displayed accordingly value by value.