Using LDAP for Auth & Access Control?

[starling@westel.net (Chris Starling)]

I'm needing to develop a fairly flexible authentication and access 
control scheme for a client/server type of application.  I began my 
research for a solution being inspired by Netware's NDS, having 
had a very minor amount of experience with it.  I mentioned this to 
a friend who said I should look into LDAP for storing user access 
information and I realized the World of Directory Services.

Now, I'm struggling trying to assimilate all this LDAP information 
I'm reading online into my RDBMS-oriented brain.  And I'm 
wondering:

Is there a good example or case study available online that 
illustrates the use of LDAP for a authentication & access control 
implementation?


I'm reading the mailing list archives and searching the web, but I 
have yet to find a good example that will really help me understand 
how to adapt LDAP's objects for this application.  If there's a book 
with this information in it, I'd be interested to hear about it as well.

It just seems like everything I read about LDAP lists all these 
varied and different applications it can be used for, but all the 
examples I'm reading are for simple phonebook type directories.

Thanks a bunch,
-chris