High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A CCSO name-server or Ph protocol was an early form of database search on the web. In its most common form it was used to look up information such as phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Today this service has been largely replaced by LDAP. It was used mainly in the early-to-middle 1990s. The name-server was developed by Steve Dorner at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.