4.0 Referral Handling in LDAPv3

Because of the distributed nature of directory services, a search sent to an LDAP server on eDirectory™ has a high probability of returning partial data, and referrals for the rest of the data.

When an LDAP server does not contain the requested data and a referral is necessary, the LDAPGroup object in eDirectory can be configured to handle them in one of four ways:

Configure eDirectory to return complete data and never referrals to the client (always chain).
Send referrals to the client only for eDirectory servers that do not support chaining.
Always send referrals to the client (never chain).
The client applications can be configured to have the API follow referrals, or the applications can perform their own handling of the referrals.

When you are using the LDAP SDK, note that referrals are handled differently for asynchronous and synchronous requests. Details are outlined in the following sections:

Section 4.1, Configuring eDirectory to Return Complete Data
Section 4.2, Configuring eDirectory to Return Referrals
Section 4.3, Enabling Referral Handling in the Application
Section 4.4, Following Referrals Using Synchronous Requests