LDAP UID as a naming attribute for persons?

[Ed Reed <ED_REED@novell.com>]

I've just been talking with our developers, who inform me that they're seeing a number of LDAP add operations come through in imports and direct operations from other vendor's products that use uid as a naming attribute for persons.

Could someone please point me to the naming rules which support the use of uid OR CN as naming attributes for any assortment of internet persons?  I must have missed the issued standard.

Further, the semantic interpretation of the uid attribute seems to be - perform a search for all objects within some subtree (unclear what the definition is) to verify that there are no entries with this uid value alread instantiated.  Is that correct?  Where is THAT documented?  I'd just like to be sure we're implementing the algorithm as specified, and not just making something up that may not work with all the rest of the world.

Thanks,
Ed

----------------------
Ed Reed, Technologist
Novell, Inc.
+1 801 861-3320