TABLE OF CONTENTS Standards exist within every industry and are usually present within organizations and companies. Standards exist to provide consistency and predictability. Imagine the difficulty you would experience maintaining any type of machinery without standards every bolt would be different from the others, there would be no way to buy a wrench for bolts with any degree of certainty that it would work, and each piece of a machine would be handmade to match its counterpart. In this section, we look at the benefits to standardization in Active Directory design.
As mentioned, standardization provides consistency and predictability in a design. In the following sections, we will begin to look at the structure of Active Directory in an effort to see how standardization plays a key part in a successful Active Directory design and deployment. Let's first look at the benefits to a standardized design.
Standardizing a directory or database structure provides the benefit of consistency. In a given directory, you do not want duplicate names for different objects. Likewise, you do not want to list objects in an inconsistent fashion. Computer-based directories are searchable listings of items. Following a naming standard, for example, provides simplified searches. Imagine the phone book without standardized naming conventions. Some names might be listed by first name followed by last name. Others might be listed as last name first, while still others could use initials or address information. The lack of standardized naming in this case would make the directory nearly useless.
