Enterprise Root and Services

A service can be named relative to

• An organizational unit

• The enterprise root

• A user

• A host

• A site

Services named relative to the enterprise root are the same as services named relative to the top organizational unit.

A service context is named by using the namespace identifiers service or _service, relative to the organization, site, user, or host with which it is associated. For example, if orgunit/corp.finance names an organizational unit, then orgunit/corp.finance/service/calendar names the calendar service of the organizational unit corp.finance. (See Service Namespace and Composing Names Relative to Services and Files for more information on the user namespace and naming objects relative to users.)

FNS does not restrict the types of bindings in the service namespace. Applications can create contexts of a type other than service contexts and bind them in the service namespace.

FNS supports the creation of generic contexts in the service context. A generic context is similar to a service context except that a generic context has an application-determined reference type. All other properties of a generic context are the same as a service context.

For example, a company named World Intrinsic Designs Corp (WIDC), reserves the name extcomm in the service namespace to refer to a generic context for adding bindings related to its external communications line of products. The context bound to extcomm is a generic context, with reference type WIDC_comm. The only difference between this context and a service context is that this context has a different reference type.

Service names should be registered with Sun Microsystems, Inc., as directed in Service Name and Reference Registration.