Alias dereferencing in non-search operations

[Jim Sermersheim <JIMSE@novell.com>]

It looks (to me) like X.500 directories dereference alias entries when resolving 'base' names unless the dontDereferenceAliases serviceControl option is set. In other words, the dontDereferenceAliases option is used like the "derefFindingBaseObj" LDAP search option.

In X.500 this applies to all operations, not just search. In LDAP, there doesn't seem to be a prescribed default behavior when resolving the name specified in operations like BindRequest, ModifyRequest, DelRequest, etc.

If there is a default behavior, how does one change it? In some cases it makes more sense to dereference and others it doesn't. For instance, if I name an alias during a delete, is the alias or the referenced entry deleted? I think most implementations delete the alias, which is probably desirable. On the other hand, Bind is an operation where dereferencing would make sense. Many times aliases are created as a shortcut so that a user's DN isn't so long. In this case, one would want to bind using the alias and have the server automatically dereference.