title: Is LDAP binding account required for user authentication?
body: <p>I am making a portal for my organization in which I want the user to login to that portal with their organization acoount's ID and password.</p>
  <p>For this purpose I am using LDAP authentication with Java.</p>
  <p>After reading through quite a few articles, I found the following steps for authentication:</p>
  <ol>
  <li><p>bind to LDAP server using some binding or technical account</p>
  </li>
  <li><p>search for the user details in LDAP server who is trying to log in</p>
  </li>
  <li><p>try to bind to server again with user's Distinguished name and password.</p>
  </li>
  </ol>
  <h3>Question 1: Is that all?</h3>
  <p>Is the above process exactly correct or I am missing some info as I am a novice programmer? And what does <em>binding</em> mean conceptually?</p>
  <h3>Question 2: Why use a bind account?</h3>
  <p>I wonder what is the need of binding account? If directly I try to bind the LDAP server with user's credential and if it is successful, then can I give him the access?</p>
  <p>I have <code>JXplorer</code> tool in which i am able to connect to LDAP server with my own organization's credential. So I was thinking what is the need of first binding to LDAP server with some other account?</p>