I don't know if my question title even made sense - but let me explain.

When you do an LDAP query, you (apparently) are supposed to specify a DN in the Bind to "login" to the LDAP server. When I do this with slapd/OpenLDAP, the Bind DN is a normal DN like 

> 
> cn=brad,ou=users,dc=corp
> 
> 
> 

or whatever. However, when I do this against [our corporate] Active Directory [server] - it wants a "Bind DN" to be like:

> 
> CORP\brad
> 
> 
> 

Which actually works. However, "CORP\brad" isn't really a DN in the ldap tree. In reality, "brad" exists as an object like "cn=brad,ou=users,dc=corp" - and this object has an "sAMAAccountName" attribute of "brad" (my actual username - changed here for simplification). I don't know if this is just "coincidence" - or if there could be others like this or what. How do you tell?

So - my quesion is - based on the DN/"Credentials" that were passed to the BIND, how can you determine what actual "Distingushed Name" the specified "Bind DN" equates to - when in AD - they don't appear to be one and of the same?