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canonical name

The canonical name of a directory object is the distinguished name, rendered in a more friendly way, namely, root first, "/" delimited, and without the LDAP attribute tags (CN=, DC=).

For example, the following distinguished name:

CN=Foo,OU=MyOU,DC=Microsoft,DC=Com

is rendered as

Microsoft.Com/MyOU/Foo

in canonical form.

class

In ADSI, a class is a formal description of a discrete, identifiable type of object that can be stored in a directory service. For example, User, Print-Queue, and Group are all classes in Active Directory™. The definition of a class is stored in a directory service's schema, and acts as a template for instances of the class.

class instance

A class instance is a specific occurrence of a class defined in a directory service schema. For example, user objects with the attributes "James Smith" or "Martha Dale" would represent instances of the user class.

client (directory client)

A directory client is a server, workstation, or application that accesses a directory service using the LDAP protocol to query the directory for objects of interest.

collection

A collection is an arbitrary set of directory objects that can be represented using the same data type. In ADSI, you can use the IADsCollection interface to work with collections.

common name (CN)

Every object in Active Directory™ has a naming attribute from which it's relative distinguished name is formed. For most object classes, the naming attribute is the Common-Name (cn). For example, a user object with its cn set to "John Smith" might have a distinguished name of CN=John Smith,CN=Users,DC=Microsoft,DC=com.

component object model (COM)

The component object model is a programming model that defines the way in which software components communicate with and provide services to one another, regardless of where the components reside. ADSI defines a set of COM interfaces (and related APIs) for working with directory service objects. For more information, see the COM SDK.

configuration partition

A directory partition that contains replication topology and other configuration information that must be replicated throughout the forest. Every DC in an enterprise forest has a replica of the same configuration partition.

container

A container is a directory object that can contain other directory objects. In Active Directory™, the schema definition of each object class determines the types of objects that can be containers of instances of the class. See Containers and Leaves and IADsContainer.

content rules

Content rules define the possible attributes of the class instances stored in a directory service. In Active Directory™, the schema definition of each class specifies the mandatory (mayHave) and optional (mustHave) attributes for instances of the class. See Characteristics of Object Classes.

cross-reference

Active Directory™ stores knowledge information about the naming contexts in cross-reference objects. A cross-reference provides information to the directory system agent (DSA) to use to generate referrals.

Cross-references can refer to naming contexts that are part of the local forest, or that are external. An example of an external naming context is a separate Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directory used in an enterprise that also has Windows 2000 installed. By creating a cross-reference for the separate LDAP directory, Active Directory™ DSA can generate referrals to the external directory when client queries reference it.