These discussions should familiarize you with basic NDS eDirectory concepts. Familiarity with NDS eDirectory concepts helps you understand the issues you will be dealing with in your code. If you are already familiar with these concepts, skip to the detailed source code listing and explanations.

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Introduction to NDS eDirectory

The NDS eDirectory Tree

Objects in the NDS eDirectory Tree

Introduction to NDS eDirectory
NDS eDirectory is a Directory Service. Directory Services have been around for several years, but mostly in the enterprise environment. A Directory Service allows you to easily manage your network resources. Simply put, the NDS eDirectory Directory is a database of objects that represent network resources, such as network users, servers, printers, print queues, and applications. The NDS eDirectory Directory can be described as a hierarchal tree. (For more information about NDS eDirectory objects, see the NDS eDirectory schema documentation. You can freely download the NDS eDirectory schema documentation from developer.novell.com.)

The NDS eDirectory Directory is stored as a set of database files on a server. A NetWare server stores these files on volume SYS. If no file system volumes are present, the server stores the NDS eDirectory database files in an NDS eDirectory installation subdirectory. The NDS eDirectory Directory can be replicated on multiple servers.

The NDS eDirectory Tree
The NDS eDirectory tree can be thought of as a distributed database that contains directory information about objects. That is, the database contains objects and the attributes, or properties, that describe those objects. Each NDS eDirectory tree maintains its own database of objects. Because it is a distributed database, the database is usually contained on more than one server.

The information in an NDS eDirectory tree does not describe the physical layout of the network. It usually describes the logical organization of the business. The NDS eDirectory tree is usually organized into subtrees that reflect the different departments and units in an organization. In turn, those subtrees contain the resources within the different departments.

Figure 1 shows an example NDS eDirectory tree.

Objects in the NDS eDirectory Tree
The NDS eDirectory tree is made up of objects. These objects represent network entities and are of two basic types: Leaf objects and container objects. In the tree representation, container objects can hold leaf objects and other container objects. Container objects are Country objects, Organization objects, or Organizational Unit objects. Leaf objects usually represent a network resource such as a user or a printer and can hold no other object.

Figure 2 shows an example of an NDS eDirectory tree with the appropriate objects.

If Acme used the Country Organizational Unit to organize its tree by country, the country organizational unit would be located between the root and the Organization objects.

Figure 3 shows an NDS eDirectory tree that has a Country object.

An object's name context is a list of these containers between the object and [Root]. This context, or name, describes its position in the NDS eDirectory tree.