Designing Your Directory Tree; Choosing A Suffix - Netscape DIRECTORY SERVER 6.1 - DEPLOYMENT Deployment Manual

Designing Your Directory Tree

• Support for the applications using your directory
• Simplified directory navigation for directory users
The structure of your directory tree follows the hierarchical LDAP model. Your
directory tree provides a way to organize your data, for example, by group, by
people, or by place. It also determines how you partition data across multiple
servers. For example, each database needs data to be partitioned at the suffix level.
Without the proper directory tree structure, you may not be able to spread your
data across multiple servers as you would like.
In addition, replication is constrained by what sort of directory tree structure you
use. You must carefully define partitions for replication to work. If you want to
replicate only portions of your directory tree, you need to take that into account
during the design process. If you plan to use access controls on branch points, that
is also a consideration in your directory tree design.
NOTE
Designing Your Directory Tree
This section guides you through the major decisions you make during the directory
tree design process. The directory tree design process involves the following steps:
• Choosing a suffix to contain your data
• Determining the hierarchical relationship among data entries
• Naming the entries in your directory tree hierarchy
The following sections describe the directory tree design process in more detail.

Choosing a Suffix

The suffix is the name of the entry at the root of your tree, below which you store
your directory data. Your directory can contain more than one suffix. You may
choose to use multiple suffixes if you have two or more directory trees of
information that do not have a natural common root.
58 Netscape Directory Server Deployment Guide • August 2002
Directory Server 6.1 introduces a new concept for hierarchical
navigation and organization of directory information, the virtual
directory information tree views. Be sure to read "Virtual Directory
Information Tree Views," on page 76 before you design your
directory tree.