HP-UX Directory Server 8.1 plug-in reference

Table Of Contents
3.1.2 Specifying the order of plug-in directives
Generally speaking, you cannot rely on plug-ins being called in any particular order. For example,
you cannot rely on a particular preoperation plug-in to be called before another. All plug-ins
should be written so that they function correctly irrespective of the order in which they are called.
If necessary, you can name the plug-ins to take advantage of the alphabetical order in which the
server loads plug-ins. The loading order is determined by standard ASCII ordering of the cn
value of the plug-in entry, which appears under cn=plugins,cn=config in the dse.ldif
file.
CAUTION:
This feature may be deprecated in a future version of the product. It is therefore recommended
that you write your plug-in not to rely on any specific loading order.
3.1.3 Summary of plug-in directives
The following table summarizes the different types of plug-ins that you can specify in the plug-in
configuration file.
Table 3-1 Directives for specifying different plug-in types
Example of useDescriptionDirective
If you encrypt data with an entry store
plug-in function before saving the data
to the database, you can define an
entry_fetch function that decrypts
data after reading it from the database.
Declares an entry fetch plug-in, which is
called by the server after retrieving an entry
from the default back end database.
entryfetch
You can define an entry_store
function to encrypt data before saving
the data to the database.
Declares an entry store plug-in, which is
called by the server before saving an entry
to the default back end database. (If you are
writing your own database plug-in, you do
not need to use this plug-in.)
entrystore
Declares an extended operation plug-in,
which is called by the server when receiving
a request for an extended operation from a
client.
extendedop
Declares a matching rule plug-in, which is
called by the server when receiving a search
request with an extensible matching search
filter from a client. This type of plug-in is
also called by the server when indexing
attributes for the back end database.
matchingRule
You can define a data_notification
function to send notification to the
administrator if certain data has changed.
Declares a postoperation/data notification
plug-in, which is called by the server after
performing an LDAP operation.
postoperation
You can define a data_validation
function to check new entries before they
are added to the directory.
Declares a preoperation/data validation
plug-in, which is called by the server before
performing an LDAP operation.
preoperation
You can define a function that specifies
how the “equals” comparison works for
case-insensitive strings.
Declares a syntax plug-in, which is called
by the server when getting a list of possible
candidates for a search, when determining
how to compare values in searches, and
when adding or deleting values from
certain attribute indexes.
syntax
3.1 Creating a plug-in configuration file 39