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Grouping Directory Entries
Once you have created entries, you can group them for ease of administration. The
Directory Server supports several methods for grouping entries and sharing
attributes between entries:
•
Using roles
•
Using class of service
The following sections describe each of these mechanisms in more detail.
About Roles
Roles are a new entry grouping mechanism. Your directory tree organizes
information hierarchically. This hierarchy is a grouping mechanism, though it is
not suited for short-lived, changing organizations. Roles provide another grouping
mechanism for more temporary organizational structures.
Roles unify static and dynamic groups. You use static groups to create a group
entry that contains a list of members. Dynamic groups allow you to filter entries
that contain a particular attribute and include them in a single group.
Each entry assigned to a role contains the
that specifies all of the roles an entry belongs to. A client application can check role
membership by searching the
and therefore always up-to-date.
Roles are designed to be more efficient and easier to use for applications. For
example, applications can locate the roles of an entry rather than select a group and
browse the members list.
You can use roles to do the following:
•
Enumerate the members of the role.
Having an enumerated list of role members can be useful for resolving queries
for group members quickly.
•
Determine whether a given entry possesses a particular role.
Knowing the roles possessed by an entry can help you determine whether the
entry possesses the target role.
•
Enumerate all the roles possessed by a given entry.
•
Assign a particular role to a given entry.
attribute, a computed attribute
nsRole
attribute, which is computed by the directory
nsRole
Chapter 4
Grouping Directory Entries
Designing the Directory Tree
71
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