Creating the Directory Tree Structure39Attribute Name Definitionst A state or province name.l or locality A locality, such as a city, country, office, or facilityname.dc A domain component, as in Section 4.2.1.1,“Suffix Naming Conventions”.Table 4.1. Traditional DN Branch Point AttributesNOTEA common mistake is to assume that the directory is searched based on the attributesused in the distinguished name. The distinguished name is only a unique identifier for thedirectory entry and cannot be used as a search key. Instead, search for entries basedon the attribute-data pairs stored on the entry itself. Thus, if the distinguished name ofan entry is uid=bjensen, ou=People,dc=example,dc=com, then a search fordc=example does not match that entry unless dc:example has explicitly been added asan attribute in that entry.4.2.2.3. Replication ConsiderationsDuring the directory tree design process, consider which entries are being replicated. A natural way todescribe a set of entries to be replicated is to specify the DN at the top of a subtree and replicate allentries below it. This subtree also corresponds to a database, a directory partition containing a portionof the directory data.For example, in an enterprise environment, one method is to organize the directory tree so that itcorresponds to the network names in the enterprise. Network names tend not to change, so thedirectory tree structure is stable. Further, using network names to create the top level branches of thedirectory tree is useful when using replication to tie together different Directory Servers.For instance, Example Corp. has three primary networks known as flightdeck.example.com,tickets.example.com, and hangar.example.com. They initially branch their directory tree asfollows:Figure 4.6. Initial Branching of the Directory Tree for Example Corp.After creating the initial structure of the tree, they create additional branches as follows:
