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Virtual Directory Information Tree Views
This view of the organization serves well in many cases, but having just this one
view can be very limiting for directory navigation and management. For example,
an organization hierarchy is fine if you are looking for entries belonging to people
in the Accounts department. However, this view is much less useful for finding
entries that belong to people in a geographical location, such as Mountain View,
California. The second query is equally valid as the first one, yet it requires
knowledge of the attributes contained in the entries and additional search tools.
For such a case, navigation via the DIT is not an option.
In a similar vein, management of the directory is made very much easier by
having a DIT that matches the requirements of the management function. The
organization of your DIT may be affected by other factors, too, such as replication
and migration considerations, that cause the DIT to have functional utility for
those applications but very little practical utility in other cases.
From the above discussion, it is clear that hierarchies are a useful mechanism for
navigation and management. Yet, to avoid the burden of making changes to an
existing DIT, a deployment may elect to forgo a hierarchy altogether in favor of a
flat DIT.
It would be advantageous for deployments if the directory provided a way to
create an arbitrary number of hierarchies that get mapped to entries without
having to move the target entries in question. The virtual DIT views feature of
Directory Server resolves the quandary of deciding the DIT type you should elect
for your directory deployment.
Introduction to Virtual DIT Views
Virtual DIT views are a way to navigate hierarchically entries that do not require
the physical existence of those entries in any particular place. The virtual DIT
view uses information about the entries to place them in the view hierarchy. To
client applications, virtual DIT views look just like ordinary container hierarchies.
In a sense, virtual DIT views superimpose a DIT hierarchy over a set of entries,
irrespective of whether those entries are in a flat namespace or in another
hierarchy of their own.
Creating a virtual DIT view hierarchy is just like creating a normal DIT hierarchy.
You create the same entries (for example, organizational unit entries) but with an
additional object class (
) and a filter attribute (
) that
nsview
nsviewfilter
describes the view. Once you add the additional attribute, the entries that match
the view filter will instantly populate the view. The target entries only appear to
exist in the view; their true location never changes. Virtual DIT views act just like
normal DITs in that a subtree or a one-level search can be performed with the
expected results being returned.
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Red Hat Directory Server Deployment Guide • May 2005
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