Re: aliased bases

[Robert Streich <streich@austin.apc.slb.com>]

> Hi Robert,  While the data could be stored in the backend, the behaviour of the
> suffix is subtly different from what I would consider normal aliasing behaviour
> for an entry.  Normally, I would consider an alias consisting of one entry
> pointing to another.
> 
> The suffix applies to all entries and requires a change to a part of the DN rather
> than an association between a given object and another.  That is, the suffix alias
> applies to itself and objects other than itself.
> 
> For example, in what you suggest the alias would not apply in many expected cases
> (of course this would depend on exactly how you define aliases, you could define
> suffix aliases;).
> 
> Consider the scenario where the search base is deeper than the aliased suffix,
> e.g. for a "real" suffix of  "o=my o, c=my c" lets suppose an alias of "dc=myo,
> dc=myc".  Now, when searching with a search root of "ou=my ou, o=my o, c=my c" a
> normal alias would not associate that with "ou=my ou, dc=myo, dc=myc" since only
> the base is aliased and no internal reference is made to all the parents.
> However, the suffix alias does the association.

I may be wrong since I don't have an implementation of aliases and they are
very poorly described in the RFCs, but my impression was that an alias should
act similarly to a symbolic link on a file system. That is in the example you
give, the alias should in fact work.

Just to make sure that I understand your example, given a DIT like this where
the "dc=myo,dc=myc" entry is an alias to "o=my o,c=my c":

                                 o=my o,c=my c  <----  dc=myo,dc=myc
                                   /        \
                                  /          \
                              ou=my ou     ou=his ou

I would expect "dc=myo,dc=myc,ou=my ou" and "dc=myo,dc=myc,ou=his ou" to be valid
RDNs. Likewise, a search of "(objectclass=*)" under "dc=myo,dc=myc" whould return
all the children of "o=my o,c=my c".

Have I misinterpreted what I read in the X.5xx docs?

> I am interested in general aliasing so if someone is working on that please let me
> know...

Make that two of us.

bob

Robert Streich			streich@slb.com
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