X.500 Design Goals

single hierarchical global official Directory

with flexible delegated administration

naming all nameable things, with official names

real-world thing might have many entries/names

White Pages as killer app

Person and Organization as key objects;
but support for nodes, processes, etc, too

End-user accessible

supporting browsing, discovery, viewing, modifying
program access too, particularly X.400 mail routing

secure (access-controlled)

defining its own authentication/authorization space;
DS entries become security principals