11. Ldap schema's

Warning: this section is terribly incomplete and outdated. I should be updating it, adding the various rfc's or other authoritive sources of schematic data.

This is a proposition of a schema that can be used to accommodate all the data needed for the previously listed functions. It should under no circumstances be regarded as authoritative. It is an example that should serve it's purpose, but it is likely you have to adapt it to match your specific needs.

Because it has been a lot of work (for me, maybe it's out there but I don't know where?) to find out the specific meaning of each entry, and what information it should contain, I'll try to do this as well. It should be noted, however, that it doesn't fit together seamlessly. The Microsoft Addressbook does not seem to use some of the fields it is presenting. I suspect that for the "Title", "Nickname", "Home City", "Home State/Province", "Home ZIP Code", "Home Country/Region" and "Home Web Page" entries no information is requested. For the "Personal", "Netmeeting" and "Digital IDs" I didn't yet bother to figure out how it should be put in the Ldap database. Any information is welcome. The netscape address book has a similar problem. When a record is copied from an LDap directory to a local address book, some of the fields are lost. As the nature of an company-wide addressbook should discourage users to copy addresses locally, this is not a big problem though. But netscape address book has another little oddity though. In a normal address record, the Ldap attribute associated with "Nickname" is xmozillanickname. When searching for addresses however, the associated attribute is simple nickname. That is the reason why the nickname entry shows up twice in the schema.

This schema is known to work with Microsoft Outlook 2000, and Netscape 4.73. If you find I'm wrong about a description, function, or neccessity of an entry, please do let me know!

The schema file that represent this schema can be found in Section 12.1.

Table 1. Ldap attributes and objectclasses - quick description

Function	Objectclass	Attributes	Description	(Default) value
User accounts	top		default
	top	ou	Organizational Unit	Users
	person		Owner is a person
		uid	unix login name	foo
		cn	Common Name	Foo Bar
		sn	Surname	Bar
	account		Owner has an account
	posixaccount		Owner has a Unix account
		uidNumber	uid	513
		gidNumber	gid	100
		homedirectory	Home directory	/home/users/foo
		userpassword	unix password	S3cr3t
	sambaaccount		Owner has a samba account
		ntuid	Unknown	uid
		rid	Unknown	uidnumber
		lmpassword	Lanman password hash	Unused
		ntpasswd	NT password hash	Unused
		loginshell	Users shell	/bin/pleurop
Machine accounts	top		default
	top	ou	Organizational Unit	Machines
	posixaccount		Owner has a unix account
		uid	login name	speed$
		uidnumber	unix uid	514
		gidnumber	gid	100
		homedirectory	Home directory	Unused
Microsoft Address Book	top		default
	top	ou	Organizational Unit	Addressbook
	microsoftaddressbook		Owner has Microsofts Addressbook properties
		cn	Name
		c	Business country
		department	Business department
		facsimiletelephonenumber	Business fax number
		givenname	First name
		homephone	Home phone number
		homepostaladdress	Home postal address
		info	Notes
		initials	Initials
		l	Business city
		mail	Email address
		mobile	Home cellphone number
		organizationname	Company name
		otherfacsimiletelephonenumber	Home fax number
		otherpager	Business pager number	can be "pager" too?
		physicaldeliveryofficename	Location of office at work
		postaladdress	Business postal address
		postalcode	Business postal code
		sn	Last Name
		st	Business state/province
		telephonenumber	Business phone number
		title	Job title
		url	Business web page
Netscape Address Book	top		default
	top	ou	Organizational Unit	Addressbook
	netscapeaddressbook		Owner has Netscape's properties
		cn	Name
		cellphone	Cellphone number
		countryname	Country
		description	Description
		facsimiletelephonenumber	Fax number
		givenname	First Name
		homephone	Home phone number
		homeurl	Personal web page
		locality	Home city
		mail	Email address
		nickname	Nickname
		o	Company
		ou	Department
		pagerphone	Pager number
		postalcode	Home postal code
		sn	Last name
		st	State
		streetaddress	Home postal address
		telephonenumber	Business phone number
		title	Title
		xmozillaanyphone	Business phone number
		xmozillanickname	Nickname	Same as nickname
		xmozillausehtmlmail	Client uses html mail	TRUE
Netscape roaming access	top		default
Netscape roaming access	top	ou	Organizational Unit	Roaming

Note: Netscape and Microsoft use the addressbook entries in a slightly different way. Netscape stores a postal address in the streetaddress entry in a base64 encoded string, while Microsoft uses the postaladdress entry. However, when a streetaddress entry is present, Microsoft uses this instead of the postaladdress entry, but it's value is stored plaintext, not base64 encoded. So you cannot use them at the same time.

More information about Ldap schema's in general can be found on Linux Center. I found a document describing Microsoft Addressbook's properties on the Microsoft Developers Network.

Beware, the description given on the Microsoft page doesn't match the fields where the content shows up in address book. Also, not all fields in address book contain information, but if the listed keys don't work I wouldn't know which keys do work.