Re: attribute pointers

[John Dalbec <jpdalbec@cc.ysu.edu>]

Dane Foster wrote:
> 
> Hello all.  I'm trying to find out if it is possible to use an attribute as
> a link to another attribute in the same object class, similar to symlinks on
> Unix filesystems.  For example, if I have an attribute named 'sex' and I
> would like to create another attribute named 'gender' that points to 'sex',
> is there a way to do this in OpenLDAP?

No, AFAIK, but you can redefine the 'sex' attribute with two names:  

        NAME ( 'sex' 'gender' )

This will work *if* the application that wants to see 'gender'
explicitly requests 'gender'.  Applications that just request '*' will
see 'sex' because it's listed first.  Otherwise I expect you will need
to create a separate 'gender' attribute and store the information twice
with all the synchronization headaches that implies.

> 
> I'm asking this because I'm trying to force some applications that use LDAP
> to use a global directory namespace.  The reason I can't do that now is
> because the applications use different names to represent the same things.
> Any help or guidance is appreciated.  Thanx.
> 
> Dane Foster
> http://www.equitytg.com
> 954.360.9800