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What's in a Name?

Having gone through some of the trails in this tutorial, such as the Basics (in the Basics trail) trail, the Java Objects in the Directory (in the Java Objects and the Directory trail) trail, or the Tips for LDAP Users (in the Basics trail) trail, you probably have used some of the examples to access or update data in a naming or directory service. You were able to use these examples, or write programs of your own that use the JNDI, given very little detail about the name argument that is used pervasively throughout the JNDI. This is because the concept of a name is so ubiquitous that we all have some common preconceived notions of what it is and how to use it. The JNDI methods support such common notions and, for the most part, treat names in an intuitive manner. Consequently, not much discussion of how to specify a name is necessary.

This lesson provides details about the different types of names and their uses in the JNDI. It is intended for applications that need to do more than just pass name parameters to methods. This lesson starts off with a discussion of the use of string names and structured names and why they are both in the JNDI. It then describes the two different types of structured names: composite names and compound names. The last part of this lesson shows how to handle names with special characters and how to parse and compose names.

See the URLs (in the Beyond the Basics trail) lesson for a discussion of how URLs are treated as names in the JNDI.


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