Glossary

Glossary of terms related to LDAP

AppleShare IP Server: software from Apple that includes a file, web, FTP, and mail servers. Contains a Users & Groups Registry of users that ClickMail can access when run in AppleShare mirror mode.
AppleShare mirror mode: A directory run in this mode contains entries that represent users in AppleShare IP's Users & Groups Registry. The directory entries for these users are kept in sync with the Registry user information, such that AppleShare users can be looked up by client programs.
attribute: Part of an entry. Consists of an attribute name (such as "work phone") and one or more attribute values (such as "+1 800 555 5555"). Attributes store all the information in an entry. There are certain attribute names recognized by client programs.
attribute name: The label for one kind of data in an entry, such as the last name. ClickMail displays attribute names in plain English, while using the actual LDAP name to talk to LDAP clients. For some common names and LDAP equivalents, choose Attributes Reference from the File menu. ClickMail supports attribute names up to 127 characters.
balloon help: Onscreen help that describes objects pointed to in a window. May be turned on in the Help menu or by clicking a icon.
child: An entry that is "under" a parent entry. For example, a parent entry that represents a department of a company may have child entries representing the employees in that department. Parent-child relationships are described by distinguished names. A child's distinguished name is created by adding something on the front of the parent's.
client: "User" software that uses the services of a separate "server" program to do something, such as look up email addresses. Although email programs are mentioned as clients throughout this guide, other LDAP-aware software can also act as a client to ClickMail.
common name: An attribute. The common name contains the full name of the entry (such as "Susan B. Anthony"). Often used as the first part of a distinguished name. Often contains several values: with and without the middle name, with a nickname as the first name, etc.
distinguished name (dn): A special attribute that uniquely identifies an entry. Used as a label to "distinguish" it from any other entry. Made up of a list of attribute names and values. Example: "cn=John Smith, o=General Dynamics, c=US"
DNS: Domain Name Service/Server. Internet system that translates domain names ("gracion.com") into numeric IP addresses ("123.45.67.8"). If a host name is used to refer to the ClickMail server, a DNS server must be reachable by the client to look up ClickMail's IP address.
DSA: Directory System Agent. The X.500 term for a program like ClickMail, and what the "D" in DSE stands for (an acronym within an acronym).
DSE: DSA-Specific Entry. This is the "top" entry in an LDAP server. It describes certain attributes of the directory. Its distinguished name is "" (an empty string). Its three required attributes are namingContexts (usually one, which you just entered), subschemaSubentry (a list of distinguished names of subschema entries), and objectClass (always "*"). The DSE cannot be deleted.
emailPerson: An entry type (objectClass) created for ClickMail. emailPerson entries contain the attributes that are commonly displayed by email client programs' search functions.
entry: Container of attributes that describes a person or other entity. A directory consists of entries that can be searched and returned to client programs. (Database term: record).
entry type: An attribute that classifies the entry. Identifies this entry as a person, organization, country, device, specific kind of person, etc. (LDAP term: objectClass)
host name: A name representing a computer under TCP/IP. A host name either is a domain name or ends in one (examples: ldap.mydomain.com, mydomain.com). To connect to a directory server, a client program must know either the host name or the IP address of the server's computer.
Latin-1: (a.k.a. ISO-8859-1) A character set encoding commonly used on web pages and Windows PCs. Some LDAP clients also use this encoding. Special characters ("é" "ü" "ñ") in Latin-1 have different numeric representations than Mac OS Roman encoding. Latin-1 is a superset of US ASCII.
LDAP: Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. An Internet standard for accessing a directory (such as an address book) over TCP/IP. This sets the rules for how ClickMail talks with clients and how the data in the directory is labeled and organized.
LDAP-aware: Having the ability to look up information using the LDAP protocol (which ClickMail uses). Although the best known LDAP-aware clients are email programs, other kinds of programs can be written to be LDAP-aware
LDIF: LDAP Data Interchange Format. A text format for representing LDAP entries. ClickMail can import and export in this format. It is commonly used with large-system LDAP servers.
logging: The recording of events in ClickMail's operation that may be displayed in a window or written to a file.
IP address: a number that refers to a specific computer on the Internet. Usually seen as four numbers separated by periods, it's actually a 32-bit integer (which is why none of the four numbers ever exceeds 255). A host name usually represents one IP address, but an IP address can be referred to by several host names. ("IP," seen also in "TCP/IP," stands for Internet Protocol.)
Mac OS Roman: The character set encoding commonly used on Macintosh. A superset of US ASCII (which see). Compare Latin-1.
mail server: Program that stores and forwards Internet mail, according to Internet protocols such as IMAP, SMTP, or POP. Examples of mail servers on Macintosh are AppleShare IP Mail Server and Eudora Internet Mail Server (EIMS). Also the computer that a mail server program runs on.
mirror: Information maintained identically to that in another place, so that it can be accessed in another way. See AppleShare mirror mode.
naming context: The last part(s) of distinguished names common to the entire directory. In a parent-child tree, which theoretically extends outside the directory, the naming context could be thought of as the parent of the directory. The country attribute is commonly used as the naming context ("c=US").
objectClass: LDAP term for entry type.
permissions: Settings that restrict access to a folder, entry, or attribute to only authorized users.
port: A virtual "connector" in a computer under TCP/IP. A port is used to select a particular program running on a server. ClickMail uses the standard port for LDAP servers, 389.
preferences: Program settings that are remembered after the program quits. ClickMail's preferences are stored in the System folder's Preferences folder, as "ClickMail LDAP Preferences."
RFC: Request for Comments. Freely-available online documents that define Internet standards and protocols, among other things.
schema: Rules stating what attributes may or must be contained in an entry, according to an entry type (objectClass). A schema entry lists all the attributes belonging to a one entry type.
subschema: A more complicated way of saying schema. Actually, subschema suggests a schema that is subordinate to some other schema. In any case, the entry type for entries that describe schemas is subschema (see schema).
tab-delimited: A kind of text file where fields of data (attributes) are separated by tab characters and records (entries) are separated by return characters. Any spreadsheet or database can export in this format.
TCP/IP: (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol also TCP) A standard for formatting and exchanging data between different computers over various networks (AppleTalk is another such standard). Every packet of data sent over the Internet is formatted according to TCP/IP. TCP/IP is the "lowest common denominator" format that carries all Internet protocols (such as LDAP, SMTP, POP, and HTTP). Brought to you by the Department of Defense.
Unicode: A 16-bit character encoding system that can handle most of the world's writing systems, including Western, Asian, and Arabic. Equivalent to Universal Character Set (UCS) ISO-10646. See UTF-8.
Users & Groups Registry: A list of users on an AppleShare server with certain attributes, such as Name, Alias, and Comment. Some of these attributes are mirrored in entries in a ClickMail directory when run in AppleShare mirror mode.
UTF-8: Unicode adapted into 8-bit bytes. The standard character set encoding for LDAPv3, and used by some LDAPv2 clients (notably Netscape). A key advantage of UTF-8 is that its regular US ASCII characters (A–Z, 0–9, etc.) are identical to US ASCII, Mac OS Roman, Latin-1, etc.).
vCard: The electronic business card format for the Internet. ClickMail can import vCards. Netscape Communicator has an option for automatically attaching your vCard to outgoing email. See http://www.imc.org/pdi
X.500: The international standard for telecommunications systems directories, (part of Open Systems Interconnection or OSI). The LDAP standards are derived from X.500, and refer back to X.500 documents to define attributes and entry types. Traditionally, LDAP servers were gateways to X.500 directory servers.