The Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) database is the foundation of the Windchill application. It manages the tables which represent the state of the application at any given time.

The database stores the business object metadata, and it may also store content. Links between objects in the Windchill application are represented as primary/foreign-key relationships within the database (though the relationship is not always intuitive).

The LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) directory server maintains user and group information for Windchill as well as internal system groups. The directory server also contains Info*Engine configuration information.

The LDAP directory server is generally represented as a series of nodes in a tree, where each node has a series of attributes such as UID (user identifier) or CN (common name). To manage user and group information, Windchill can be configured to connect to one or more corporate LDAP servers as well as connect to the LDAP bundled with the software.

For details on the installed database settings, see the Entering Your Database Information.

For details on the installed directory server settings, see Entering Your LDAP Settings.