Designing Your Directory Tree68 Netscape Directory Server Deployment Guide • August 2002Naming Person EntriesThe person entry’s name, the DN, must be unique. Traditionally, distinguishednames use the commonName, or cn, attribute to name their person entries. That is, anentry for a person named Babs Jensen might have the distinguished name of:cn=Babs Jensen,dc=example,dc=comWhile allowing you to instantly recognize the person associated with the entry, itmight not be unique in an include people with identical names. This quickly leadsto a problem known as DN name collisions, multiple entries with the samedistinguished name.You can avoid common name collisions by adding a unique identifier to thecommon name. For example:cn=Babs Jensen+employeeNumber=23,dc=example,dc=comHowever, this can lead to awkward common names for large directories and canbe difficult to maintain.A better method is to identify your person entries with some attribute other thancn. Consider using one of the following attributes:• uidUse the uid (userID) attribute to specify some unique value of the person.Possibilities include a user login ID or an employee number. A subscriber in ahosting environment should be identified by the uid attribute.• mailUse the mail attribute to contain the value for the person’s email address. Thisoption can lead to awkward DNs that include duplicate attribute values (forexample: mail=bjensen@example.com, dc=example,dc=com), so you shoulduse this option only if you cannot find some unique value that you can usewith the uid attribute. For example, you would use the mail attribute insteadof the uid attribute if your enterprise does not assign employee numbers oruser IDs for temporary or contract employees.• employeeNumberFor employees of the inetOrgPerson object class, consider using an employerassigned attribute value such as employeeNumber.
