I have a search query in LDAP like this. What exactly does this query mean?
("CN=Dev-India,OU=Distribution Groups,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com");
I have a search query in LDAP like this. What exactly does this query mean?
("CN=Dev-India,OU=Distribution Groups,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com");
CN
= Common NameOU
= Organizational UnitDC
= Domain ComponentThese are all parts of the X.500 Directory Specification, which defines nodes in a LDAP directory.
You can also read up on LDAP data Interchange Format (LDIF
), which is an alternate format.
You read it from right to left, the right-most component is the root of the tree, and the left most component is the node (or leaf) you want to reach.
Each =
pair is a search criteria.
With your example query
("CN=Dev-India,OU=Distribution Groups,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com");
In effect the query is:
From the com
Domain Component, find the google
Domain Component, and then inside it the gl
Domain Component and then inside it the gp
Domain Component.
In the gp
Domain Component, find the Organizational Unit called Distribution Groups
and then find the the object that has a common name of Dev-India
.
What are CN, OU, DC?
From RFC2253 (UTF-8 String Representation of Distinguished Names):
String X.500 AttributeType ------------------------------ CN commonName L localityName ST stateOrProvinceName O organizationName OU organizationalUnitName C countryName STREET streetAddress DC domainComponent UID userid
What does the string from that query mean?
The string ("CN=Dev-India,OU=Distribution Groups,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com"
) is a path from an hierarchical structure (DIT = Directory Information Tree) and should be read from right (root) to left (leaf).
It is a DN (Distinguished Name) (a series of comma-separated key/value pairs used to identify entries uniquely in the directory hierarchy). The DN is actually the entry's fully qualified name.
Here you can see an example where I added some more possible entries.
The actual path is represented using green.
The following paths represent DNs (and their value depends on what you want to get after the query is run):
"DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com"
"OU=Distribution Groups,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com"
"OU=People,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com"
"OU=Groups,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com"
"CN=QA-USA,OU=Distribution Groups,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com"
"CN=Dev-India,OU=Distribution Groups,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com"
"CN=Ted Owen,OU=People,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com"