Dollar signs in Link Criteria
Link criteria are of the form ATTR OP VALUE where ATTR is an
attribute in the schema of the Connector itself, OP is the operator (typically 'equals') and VALUE is the
thing to be matched.
VALUE is treated as a literal string, so typing the name of a Work Entry attribute will match the Connector attribute with the textual name entered. To get TDI to use the
value of the named Attribute instead, you must prepend the name with a special charater: a dollar sign ($) or at-symbol (@).
'$' means that TDI will match against the value of an attribute. The value used is the first one TDI finds in this Attribute. While this works fine with single-valued attributes, it is less reliable for those with multiple values.
Attributes are stored in the Entry object as a SET OF
rather than SEQUENCE OF and thus do not have a defined order.
'@' means that TDI will match against any value of the named attribute.
Dollar signs in Attribute names ($dn)
Working with LDAP directories, entries get a special attribute called
$dn with the value of the entry's distinguished name. The dn is not actually an attribute found in the directory entry. It is the
path in the directory tree to this
leaf. TDI stores this path as the value of the constructed
$dn attribute. It is used during add, search and delete modify operations to indicate the location of an Entry. Using the dn in a Link Criteria instructs the Connector to do a direct
read of the entry, instead of a
search. All TDI components that work with LDAP (like the LDAP Connector and LDIF Parser) support this naming convention.
Note: If you want to use the $dn attribute as the VALUE of a Link Criteria, you enter it like this:
$$dn
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AndrewFindlay - 01 Nov 2005
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EddieHartman - 01 Nov 2005