Structure of the Enterprise Namespace

FNS policies define the structure of the enterprise namespace. The purpose of this structure is to allow easy and uniform composition of names. This enterprise namespace structure has two main rules:

• Objects with narrower scopes are named relative to objects with wider scopes.

• Namespace identifiers are used to denote the transition from one namespace to the next.

Table 22-2 is a summary of FNS policies for arranging the enterprise namespace. Figure 22-2 shows an example of a namespace layout that follows these FNS policies.

Table 22-2 Policies for the Federated Enterprise Namespace

Namespace  Identifiers	Subordinate Namespaces	Parent Context	Namespace Organization	Syntax
orgunit  _orgunit  org	Site, user, host, file system, service	Enterprise root	Hierarchical	Dot-separated right-to-left
site  _site	Service, file system	Enterprise root, organizational unit	Hierarchical	Dot-separated right-to-left
user  _user	Service, file system	Enterprise root, organizational unit	Flat	Solaris login name
host  _host	Service, file system	Enterprise root, organizational unit	Flat	Solaris host name
service  _service	Application specific	Enterprise root, organizational unit, site, user, host	Hierarchical	/ separated left-to-right
fs    _fs	None	Enterprise root, organizational unit, site, user, host	Hierarchical	/ separated, left-to-right
printer	None	Service	Hierarchical	/ separated left-to-right

Figure 22-2 Example of an Enterprise Namespace

The namespace of an enterprise is structured around a hierarchy of organizational units. Names of sites, hosts, users, files, and services can be named relative to names of organizational units by composing the organizational unit name with the appropriate namespace identifier and object name.

In Figure 22-2, a user myoko in the west division of the sales organization of an enterprise is named using the name orgunit/west.sales/user/myoko.

Note the use of the namespace identifier user to denote the transition from the orgunit namespace to the user namespace. In a similar fashion (with the use of appropriate namespace identifiers), names of files and services can also be named relative to names of sites, users, or hosts. Names of sites can be named relative to organizational unit names.

The goal of easy and uniform composability of names is met using this structure. For example, once you know the name for an organizational unit within an enterprise (for example, orgunit/west), you can name a user relative to it by composing it with the user namespace identifier and the user's login name to yield a name such as orgunit/west/user/josepha.

To name a file in this user's file system, you can use a name like orgunit/west/user/josepha/fs/notes.