Programming Guides › Connector Programming Guide › Connector Concepts › Searching

Searching

Searching is one of the most difficult operations to implement for a connector. LDAP searches are powerful because they are formulated using a number of independent choices:

1. What is the base object for the search, that is, under what object does the search start?
2. What scope applies to objects under the searches base object?
   • Object—only the base object
   • One-level—immediate children of the base object only
   • Subtree—any objects contained anywhere under the base object under any depth of containment
3. What filter condition is applied to the objects falling within the chosen scope? Filter conditions further restrict the objects which are of interest for the search, based on the values of their attributes

   Note: The objectclass attribute can be used to restrict only certain object classes

4. What attributes are returned for each object falling within the specified scope and matching the specified filter?