In the logical view of the network, resources are organized into groups that are in turn organized into a hierarchy that reflects their usage, function, or geographical location. For the user to use the resources on this network, the user logs in to this logical view of the network. Access to resources on the network can be controlled by security mechanisms that are global in scope and apply to the entire network. In NetWare 3.x and NetWare 2.2 networks, access to resources was controlled by a security mechanism that was local to each server (called the bindery). The bindery did not have network-wide significance. The bindery-based services were therefore server-centric. To provide a single access to the network, the designers of NetWare 4.x created a global database called the NetWare Directory Service. The NetWare Directory Service is the mechanism used in NetWare 4.x to provide a logical view of the network.

The NetWare Directory Services provide a global database service that is not confined to a single server and represents network-wide resources. This is the single most important difference between NetWare 4.x and NetWare 3.x/2.2. It is also the feature that affects many of the network administration tasks and network utilities. Many of the pre-NetWare 4.0 network administration and utilities modified the network information in the bindery. The NetWare 3.x/2.2 utilities cannot be used for NetWare 4.x because the information in a global database needs to be modified, and the older utilities understand the bindery but have no concept of a global database. Because of this, several of the older utilities have been consolidated into newer utilities that have the understanding of how to correctly modify the global database.