Format of Distinguished Names

The X.500 and LDAP communities differ in the way they write distinguished names (DNs):

• X.500—DNs are written from the top of the tree down, for example:

  <c US><o Acme><ou Staff><cn "John Citizen">
  

LDAP—DNs are written from the leaf entry up, for example:

cn=John Citizen, ou=Staff, o=Acme, c=US

If a portion of prefix is more than one word, you can enclose the whole prefix in quotes or just the problem portion. For example, both of these prefixes will work:

o=“democorp test”,c=au
“o=democorp test,c=au”

Note: Use a pair of quotes (“”) for a null DN.