posted 20 years ago
hi
according to me,
principal is an object that presents the "identity" (name of the login user for e.g.)
credentials are the "credibility" parameters associated with the principal (password for e.g.)
in LDAP for e.g. we can have a user that can be "identified" by DN="uid=maulin,ou=developers,o=mycompany"
that is a principal for user "maulin" and if my password is "password" then my credentials is "password"
hope this helps.
regards
maulin