A method, system, and article of manufacture for querying an implicit hierarchy is disclosed. According to one approach, implicit hierarchies can be queried by accessing the relevant catalog tables for the attribute relevant to the query. Each identified entry in the relevant catalog table is followed through its implied hierarchical chains until all relevant entries have been identified. The catalog table containing the normalized form of the DN for each user can be consulted to identify the entry identifier for each entry corresponding to implicit hierarchy being queried, which can be searched in the appropriate catalog table to search the chain of entries for the implied hierarchy. In an approach, one or more templates may be used to generate a query language statement to perform the query upon the implicit hierarchy.