The following subtopics describe the structure of the names found in a DCE environment. DCE names can consist of several different parts, which reflect the federated nature of the DCE namespace. A DCE name has some combination of the following elements. They must occur in this order, but most elements are optional.
· Prefix
· GDS cell name or DNS cell name
· GDS name or CDS name
· Junction
· Application name
A DCE name can be represented by a string that is a readable description of a specific entry in the DCE namespace. The name is a string consisting of a series of elements separated by / (slash). The elements are read from left to right. Each consecutive element adds further specificity to the entry being described, until finally one arrives at the rightmost element, which is the simple name of the entry itself. Thus, in appearance DCE names are similar to UNIX filenames.
In the discussion that follows, a DCE name element is the single piece of a name string enclosed between a consecutive pair of slashes. For example, consider the following string:
/.../C=US/O=OSF/OU=DCE/hosts/abc/self
In it, the following two substrings are both elements:
O=OSF
abc
The entire name contains (counting the ... element) a total of seven elements.
In GDS, an element is called a relative distinguished name (RDN) and the entire name is called a distinguished name (DN). In the preceding example, the attribute type O stands for the Organization type OID, which is 2.5.4.10.
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