OSF DCE Administration Guide--Core Components

OSF DCE Administration Guide—Core Components
Distinguished Names (RDNs). Each RDN consists of one or more assertions of the type
and value of an attribute at a particular position in the DIT. Attribute types indicate the
nature of the information that is stored in the attribute value. A pair consisting of an
attribute type and value is known as an Attribute Value Assertion (AVA). RDNs can
have multiple AVAs. For example, the distinguished name
/C=us/O=osf/OU=branch1/CN=nollman,OU=doc-team
consists of four RDNs. The final RDN consists of two AVAs that are separated by a
comma.
Figure 11-4 illustrates the concepts of RDNs and distinguished names and how they
relate to the DIT. The figure shows the following:
• A DIT consisting of a hierarchy of schema-defined attribute types
• RDNs that result from assertions of an attribute type and value
• Distinguished names that result from a concatenation of the RDNs
Figure 11-4. RDNs and Distinguished Names
Relative Distinguished Name
Distinguished
Value
Schema−Defined
Attribute Type
Distinguished Name
DIT
=
=
=
=
US
ABC
Sales
Smith
OU
C
O
CN
/.../
/.../
/.../
C = US
C = US/O = ABC
C = US/O = ABC/OU = Sales
/.../C=US/O=ABC/OU=Sales/CN=Smith
The shaded boxes in the DIT represent the entries that are named in the column labeled
Relative Distinguished Name. The schema dictates that countries are named directly
below the root, followed by organizations, organization units, and names of users. Each
attribute value that makes up an RDN (and thus a distinguished name) is called a
distinguished value.
As the rightmost column in the figure illustrates, the distinguished name of the entry at
each level of the DIT is a concatenation of RDNs from the root of the global directory to
that entry’s level. The lowest entry in the hierarchy,
/.../C=US/O=ABC/OU=Sales/CN=Smith, represents the name of a user, John Smith,
who works in the sales division of ABC Company, an organization in the United States.
The abbreviated attribute type labels stand for Country (C), Organization (O),
Organization Unit (OU), and Common Name (CN).
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