Preface

Oracle Internet Directory Application Developer's Guide provides information for enabling applications to access Oracle Internet Directory by using the C API and the PL/SQL API.

This preface contains these topics:

• Audience

• Organization

• Related Documentation

• Conventions

• Documentation Accessibility

Audience

Oracle Internet Directory Application Developer's Guide is for application developers who wish to enable applications to store and update directory information in an Oracle Internet Directory server. It is also intended for anyone who wants to know how the Oracle Internet Directory C API and PL/SQL API work.

Organization

Chapter 1, "Introduction"

Briefly describes the intended audience and components of Oracle Internet Directory Software Developer's Kit release 3.0.1. It also lists the other components of Oracle Internet Directory and the platforms it supports.

Chapter 2, "Concepts"

This chapter provides a brief overview of all of the major operations available in the C API and the PL/SQL API. It provides developers a general understanding of Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) from a perspective independent of the API.

Chapter 3, "The Oracle Internet Directory C API"

Introduces the Oracle Internet Directory API and provides examples of how to use it

Chapter 4, "The Oracle Internet Directory PL/SQL API"

Introduces the PL/SQL API, which is contained in a PL/SQL package called DBMS_LDAP. It also contains examples of how to use it.

Chapter 5, "Command-Line Tools Syntax"

Provides syntax, usage notes, and examples for using LDAP Data Interchange Format (LDIF) and LDAP command line tools

Glossary

Related Documentation

For more information, see these Oracle resources:

• Oracle9i documentation set, especially
  • Oracle Internet Directory Administrator's Guide.

  • PL/SQL User's Guide and Reference

In North America, printed documentation is available for sale in the Oracle Store at

http://oraclestore.oracle.com/

Customers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) can purchase documentation from

http://www.oraclebookshop.com/

Other customers can contact their Oracle representative to purchase printed documentation.

To download free release notes, installation documentation, white papers, or other collateral, please visit the Oracle Technology Network (OTN). You must register online before using OTN; registration is free and can be done at

http://technet.oracle.com/membership/index.htm

If you already have a username and password for OTN, then you can go directly to the documentation section of the OTN Web site at

http://technet.oracle.com/docs/index.htm

For additional information, see:

• Chadwick, David. Understanding X.500--The Directory. Thomson Computer Press, 1996.

• Howes, Tim and Mark Smith. LDAP: Programming Directory-enabled Applications with Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. Macmillan Technical Publishing, 1997.

• Howes, Tim, Mark Smith and Gordon Good, Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services. Macmillan Technical Publishing, 1999.

• Internet Assigned Numbers Authority home page, http://www.iana.org, for information about object identifiers

• Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) documenation, especially:
  • http://www.ietf.org for the IETF home page

  • http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/ldapext-charter.html for the ldapext charter and LDAP drafts)

  • http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/
ldup-charter.html for the LDUP charter and drafts

  • http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2254.txt, "The String Representation of LDAP Search Filters"

  • http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1823.txt, "The LDAP Application Program Interface"

• The OpenLDAP Community, http://www.openldap.org

Conventions

This section describes the conventions used in the text and code examples of this documentation set. It describes:

• Conventions in Text

• Conventions in Code Examples

Conventions in Text

We use various conventions in text to help you more quickly identify special terms. The following table describes those conventions and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
Bold	Bold typeface indicates terms that are defined in the text or terms that appear in a glossary, or both.	When you specify this clause, you create an index-organized table.
Italics	Italic typeface indicates book titles or emphasis.	Oracle9i Database Concepts Ensure that the recovery catalog and target database do not reside on the same disk.
UPPERCASE monospace (fixed-width font)	Uppercase monospace typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. Such elements include parameters, privileges, datatypes, RMAN keywords, SQL keywords, SQL*Plus or utility commands, packages and methods, as well as system-supplied column names, database objects and structures, usernames, and roles.	You can specify this clause only for a NUMBER column. You can back up the database by using the BACKUP command. Query the TABLE_NAME column in the USER_TABLES data dictionary view. Use the DBMS_STATS.GENERATE_STATS procedure.
lowercase monospace (fixed-width font)	Lowercase monospace typeface indicates executables, filenames, directory names, and sample user-supplied elements. Such elements include computer and database names, net service names, and connect identifiers, as well as user-supplied database objects and structures, column names, packages and classes, usernames and roles, program units, and parameter values. Note: Some programmatic elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter these elements as shown.	Enter sqlplus to open SQL*Plus. The password is specified in the orapwd file. Back up the datafiles and control files in the /disk1/oracle/dbs directory. The department_id, department_name, and location_id columns are in the hr.departments table. Set the QUERY_REWRITE_ENABLED initialization parameter to true. Connect as oe user. The JRepUtil class implements these methods.
lowercase monospace (fixed-width font) italic	Lowercase monospace italic font represents placeholders or variables.	You can specify the parallel_clause. Run Uold_release.SQL where old_release refers to the release you installed prior to upgrading.

Conventions in Code Examples

Code examples illustrate SQL, PL/SQL, SQL*Plus, or other command-line statements. They are displayed in a monospace (fixed-width) font and separated from normal text as shown in this example:

SELECT username FROM dba_users WHERE username = 'MIGRATE';

The following table describes typographic conventions used in code examples and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
[ ]	Brackets enclose one or more optional items. Do not enter the brackets.	DECIMAL (digits [ , precision ])
{ }	Braces enclose two or more items, one of which is required. Do not enter the braces.	{ENABLE | DISABLE}
|	A vertical bar represents a choice of two or more options within brackets or braces. Enter one of the options. Do not enter the vertical bar.	{ENABLE | DISABLE} [COMPRESS | NOCOMPRESS]
...	Horizontal ellipsis points indicate either: That we have omitted parts of the code that are not directly related to the example That you can repeat a portion of the code	CREATE TABLE ... AS subquery; SELECT col1, col2, ... , coln FROM employees;
. . .	Vertical ellipsis points indicate that we have omitted several lines of code not directly related to the example.
Other notation	You must enter symbols other than brackets, braces, vertical bars, and ellipsis points as shown.	acctbal NUMBER(11,2); acct CONSTANT NUMBER(4) := 3;
Italics	Italicized text indicates placeholders or variables for which you must supply particular values.	CONNECT SYSTEM/system_password DB_NAME = database_name
UPPERCASE	Uppercase typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. We show these terms in uppercase in order to distinguish them from terms you define. Unless terms appear in brackets, enter them in the order and with the spelling shown. However, because these terms are not case sensitive, you can enter them in lowercase.	SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees; SELECT * FROM USER_TABLES; DROP TABLE hr.employees;
lowercase	Lowercase typeface indicates programmatic elements that you supply. For example, lowercase indicates names of tables, columns, or files. Note: Some programmatic elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter these elements as shown.	SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees; sqlplus hr/hr CREATE USER mjones IDENTIFIED BY ty3MU9;

Documentation Accessibility

Oracle's goal is to make our products, services, and supporting documentation accessible to the disabled community with good usability. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documentation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Standards will continue to evolve over time, and Oracle is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that our documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For additional information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at

http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/

JAWS, a Windows screen reader, may not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, JAWS may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.