OSF DCE Administration Guide--Core Components

Introduction to the DCE Directory Service
Note that the figure shows the global DCE convention for distinguished names. Each
distinguished name starts with the representation of the global root (/...). Attribute types
and values are separated by equal signs, and RDNs are separated by slashes. These
conventions for specifying names are not followed by all X.500 implementations. In
addition, these conventions are only used at the GDS adminstration interface level.
Internally, distinguished names are specified in other ways.
The structure of GDS names points out another important difference between GDS and
CDS. A CDS name is distinct from its attributes; that is, it consists of a string of
directory names ending with the simple name of the entry. In contrast, a GDS name
consists solely of a series of attribute types and their values.
Figure 11-5 illustrates this difference in the construction of CDS and GDS names. The
CDS full name /.:/Admin/Personnel/Employee_DB is the complete directory
specification of an entry with the simple name Employee_DB. Attributes and their
values are not a part of the CDS full name. The GDS distinguished name
/.../C=US/O=ABC/OU=Sales is a concatenation of attribute types and values, one from
each level of a DIT schema.
Figure 11-5. Comparison of CDS and GDS Names
Employee_DB
Attribute
value
Attribute
name
CDS full name:
Personnel
Admin
OU Sales
GDS distinguished name:
C=US
O=ABC
/.:
C=US/O=ABC/OU=Sales/.:/Admin/Personnel/Employee_DB
/...
/.../
GDS supports the ability to search for names by supplying the values of one or more
attributes. This results in what is called descriptive naming; in a sense, users can
describe the name they are looking for. Although the search capability is valuable, it
can be expensive and time consuming, so GDS allows users to restrict the scope of a
search. Support for the search operation is limited to the GDS environment.
124243 Tandem Computers Incorporated 11− 13