Administration Guide › How CA Directory Works › Configuration › DSA Knowledge

DSA Knowledge

The information a DSA needs about other DSAs (and non-DSA directories) is called knowledge. Each DSA has its own knowledge, which includes:

• How to connect to the DSA
• The DSA's role (for example, router or data)
• The entry namespace that the DSA manages

The total knowledge of the system is used to form a backbone of directory servers to which each DSA belongs.

It is important that all DSAs in a backbone have a consistent view of each other. We recommend that all DSAs share the same knowledge.

There are two mutually exclusive ways to define the knowledge:

• set dsa command—Every DSA in the backbone has a configuration file that contains a set dsa command. This command defines the knowledge for only one DSA.

  The knowledge file has the same name as the DSA and its initialization file. A DSA determines its own identity by looking for its own name among all the set dsa definitions.

  Note: The commands in the knowledge file must appear in the correct order. For information about this order, see the text file DXHOME\config\knowledge\knowledge.help.

• DXmanager—Use DXmanager to configure the DSAs. DXmanager is a web application that stores all configuration for the entire backbone in a single XML file.

  If you use DXmanager to configure a backbone, DSAs do not allow the set dsa command. If you send a set dsa command to a DSA that is managed by DXmanager, the follow errors occur:

  • If you send the set dsa command from the console, the DSA returns a syntax error
  • If the command appears in a configuration file, the DSA stops.