Samba, PAM, LDAP and SASL

[Jack]

Just doing some playing around. I want to use one of
my PCs on my 
home LAN as a fileserveer. Mainly, the idea is to
share the 
directory of family photos locally. I know all I
really need here 
is samba. But I thought I mught as well use PAM to do 
authentication. Which led me to consider using LDAP
and SASL. Why?
I don't know. He's on third.

Anyway after having installed Samba, and relevant PAM
modules and
SASL and LDAP and setting up an LDAP server, I'm left
wondering 
what LDAP is really useful for? I've read the FAQ,
quickstart 
guide, several HOWTOs and the Administrator's manual.
I have a 
working LDAP daemon running, but am left wondering
what to do with
it.

Does anyone use LDAP? How? Why?

Now at some point I might like allowing some of my
remote family members to access this content from
outside. Which was one reason I thought I'd play
around with some of these tools. So that I could add
users without creating local accounts, and also to
maintain a single password database for managing
passwords.

Thanks.

Brian JD