JNDI

Generic naming service organization has been decpicted in the following figure:

A generic naming service

Set of bindings are maintained by the naming service. Names are related by the bindings to the objects. In a naming system, all the objects are named similarly. Naming service is used by the client so that the objects could be located by names.

Many naming services are present among which few of them will be discussed here. Each of them has similar pattern however they possess different details.

• Domain Name System: Naming service of internet; maps down the names that are people friendly into some internet Protocol addresses which are computer friendly (in certain dotted quad notations like 207.68.174.36). It is more interesting to note that Domain Name system is a service which is considered as distributed naming. This means that underlying databases as well as service has been spread at various hosts on web.

• Lightweight Directory Access Protocol: LDAP has been created by the special assistance of University of Michigan. Its name shows that it is one of the lighter weighting versions of the directory access protocol that is X.500’s part. Currently LDAP is being endorsed by the 40 companies or much more.

• Network Information System & NIS+: Sun Microsoft has played an important role in development of the Network naming services. Both of them make their users to have the access of applications and files at any host by the help of one ID/Password.