Overview - Introduction to the Directory Service
Distributed processing involves the interaction of multiple systems to do work that is done on one system in a traditional computing environment. One challenge resulting from this network-wide working environment is the need for a universally consistent way to identify and locate people and resources anywhere in the network.
The DCE Directory Service makes it possible to contact people and to use resources such as disks, print queues, and servers anywhere in the network without knowing their physical location. The DCE Directory Service is much like a telephone directory assistance service that provides a phone number when given a person's name. The DCE Directory Service, given the unique name of a person, server, or resource, can return the network address and other information associated with that name.
The DCE Directory Service stores addresses and other relevant information as attributes of the name. For example, attributes can contain the name of an organizational unit, such as European Sales; a location, such as the first floor of Building A; or a telephone number. Users can search for a name by supplying one or more of its attributes. For example, given the search criteria of John Smith and Chicago, the Directory Service could produce a list of telephone numbers for users in Chicago named John Smith.
Note: Search capabilities are currently limited to the global part of the Directory Service environment.