Handling a multi-value attribute question

[Michael A Grady]

On Dec 6, 2012, at 9:28 AM, Cantor, Scott wrote:

> On 12/6/12 10:20 AM, "Mike Flynn" <shibbolethlynda at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>> But, I am curious - Why is givenName a multi-value attribute?  We have
>> nickname...  Was there a specific scenario that created a need for
>> multiple values for these?
> 
> Because it's an LDAP attribute and LDAP is for searching primarily.

Yes, nowadays with so many people using web browsers for their mail, and having other ways to "search" for someone, it can be easy to forget that LDAP had, as at least one its primary purposes, finding people to send your email to. And different email clients (Eudora, Outlook, etc., back before web mail/browser as email client) composed their default LDAP search queries in different ways (varying which LDAP attributes were searched, how and if a "wildcard" search was done, etc.). It was particularly important at that time to populate multiple values into some of the standard name fields in order to maximize the likelihood that searches from multiple different email clients would "succeed". And this can still be an issue for those who still use a mail client, perhaps even increasing again with the use of mobile devices and apps.

Note that "nickname" was never, at that time, a field that standard email clients used as a search field, so it was useless for that purpose. I don't know if that has changed over the years or not.


> 
> -- Scott
> 
> 
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--
Michael A. Grady
Senior IAM Consultant, Unicon, Inc.