(NDS) novell, inc.'s directory services for netware, windows nt, and unix. The NDS directory represents each network resource (user, hardware, or application) as an object of a certain class, where each class has certain properties. For example, User and Print Server are object classes and a user has over 80 properties such as name, login, password, department, and title.

The directory is hierarchical, divided into branches by rules of containment. A given object can only belong to a given container (or branch). The rules governing classes, properties and, rules of containment are known as the schema.