Other kinds of entries

Directories need not necessarily be for email addresses or even for people. For example, an LDAP directory may be used by programs on users' computers to look up file server IP addresses. Here are some other entry types that are used in LDAP/X.500 directories:

organizationalRole
residentialPerson
applicationProcess
applicationEntity
device
groupOfNames

Another type of entry, alias, is used to refer to a single entry under a different name or from a different part of a tree-style directory. To create an alias entry, set the type to alias and add attribute "aliasedEntryName" which must contain the DN of the entry being aliased. To find all aliases to an entry, search for that entry's DN in the aliasedEntryName attribute. To understand the effect and use of aliases in LDAP, see RFC 2251.

• Although LDAP includes the entry type groupOfNames, LDAP clients generally cannot use group entries. As a workaround, put group names in each entry of a group. Strictly speaking, these should be department/unit (ou) values. However, many LDAP clients cannot search for ou. The way around that is to add group names as additional common names.