Object naming rules

Apply the following rules when naming NDS objects:

• The name should be unique in the branch (container) of the Directory tree where the object is located.

• The name can be up to 64 characters in length.

• You can use special characters. But, if the object needs to be accessed from a workstation running the NetWare Client shell (NETX), you should avoid using special characters.

  For a list of these special characters, see ``Naming restrictions for bindery services''.

• Object names are displayed with uppercase and lowercase letters as they are first entered, but they are not case-sensitive. Therefore, ``ManagerProfile'' and ``MANAGERPROFILE'' are considered identical names.

• Spaces and underscores can be used and are displayed as spaces. Therefore, ``Manager_Profile'' and ``Manager Profile'' are considered identical names.

  If you use a space in a name, you must place quotation marks around that text string whenever you use a command line utility that includes that text string. For this reason, spaces are not recommended.

• Country objects can have only two-character names. For example, the United States is US.

  Note that if you anticipate managing objects created from different code pages, you must limit object names and properties to those characters common to all the applicable code tables. Non-displayable Unicode characters for your code page are represented by an ASCII 3 character (a heart symbol).

Naming restrictions for NetWare Server objects

The following restrictions apply when naming Server objects:

• When you install NetWare 4, an NDS NetWare Server object is created for the server in the container object you specify.

• If you create a Server object for a server other than a NetWare 4 server, you must use the server name for the object, because NDS searches for the server to verify its existence.

Naming restrictions for bindery services

When you create objects to be accessed from workstations running the NetWare Client shell (NETX), the names of the objects must follow bindery naming rules or these clients cannot recognize them. Object names in bindery services are interpreted as follows:

• Spaces in object names are replaced by underscores.

• Object names are cut off after the 47th character.

/

slash

\

backslash

:

colon

,

comma

asterisk

?

question mark

Naming restrictions for international support

Unicode is a wide character encoding scheme that provides the basis for internationalization of the information in an NDS database. All character strings exchanged between an NDS server and a client workstation are in Unicode. The NetWare Client software handles the translation of Unicode strings.

Occasionally, however, you might use characters that Unicode cannot translate. When this happens, the character is substituted in your display as a heart symbol in DOS and as a box in Windows.

Substituted characters can prevent NDS from recognizing an object.