NDS Snoop--An NDS Prototyping Tool

Novell Cool Solutions: Feature
By Karl Bunnell

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Posted: 31 May 2001

The author of the enormously popular NDS Snoop has made numerous bug fixes to the original, and here's the new and improved version. Thanks, Karl!

What's in NDS Snoop

NDS Browser

The NDS browser can be used to view any NDS object and its corresponding attribute values. The browser allows you to browse any NDS tree in your enterprise network. Continue to click on the up-arrow of "Containers" list box until all of the trees in your environment are displayed. If you select a tree that you have not authenticated to, you will have [Public] access to that tree only.

Schema Viewer

The Schema Viewer tool is used to read all of the Attribute and Object class definitions from NDS. Expand each definition name to see its corresponding attributes. The Object Class super class hierarchy includes all of its super class lineage to "Top". You can determine which attributes are derived from each super class by its icon displayed in the tree view. Matching icons indicate that those attributes were defined for the corresponding super class.

Schema Manager

The Schema Manager tool is used to create NDS schema attribute and class definitions. You must have sufficient rights to the [Root] of the tree to use the Schema Manager. If you do not have sufficient rights, all fields are disabled and the message "You must have Admin Equivalent rights to use the Schema Manager!" is displayed at the bottom of the view. Populate the fields with the desired values and select the desired operation for the attribute or object class definition.

NDS Query

The NDS Query tool can be used to build complex search filters to Query NDS for objects that adhere to specific search criteria. For example, you could search for all User objects that have a telephone number that begins with 555. This tool is useful to determine if you can search for a attribute value or new object you have just added to the NDS tree.

Object Manager

The Object Manager is used to Create, Delete, Rename or Move any NDS object. This tool can be used to create an object of a new custom NDS Object Class schema extension you have just added. This tool automatically determines what the object's Mandatory Attributes are and allows you to add values for each.

Object Editor

The Object Editor can be used to add values for almost any attribute type for all NDS object classes (SYN_STREAM, SYN_OCTET_STRING types are not supported in this release). For example, you could add a value for a new attribute class definition "Social Security Number" to an existing NDS Object.

Usage Example

NDS Snoop can be used to prototype a complete NDS project without writing a single line of code. For example, suppose you wanted to create a new object class called "Toaster". You would use the following tools to prototype your project:

Use the Schema Manager to create a new object class named "Toaster".
Use the Schema Viewer to verify that the new object class "Toaster" has the proper schema components defined.
Use the Schema Manager to add an additional optional attribute to the "Toaster" object class (e.g. Toast Preference for defining light or dark toast).
Use the NDS Browser to navigate to the location within the NDS tree where you would like to create an NDS object of type "Toaster".
Use the Object Manager to create an object of type "Toaster".
Use the Object Editor to add additional values to the instance of the "Toaster" object you just created.
Use the NDS Query tool to search the tree for all objects of type "Toaster" that have the "Toaster Preference" value set to "Light".

Once you have verified that your NDS design is sound you are ready to begin writing the code to support the operations used in NDS snoop to prototype the NDS project.