LEX Online Manual Content

Editor for Microsoft Time Interval Attributes

This editor is used to show, edit or create Microsoft interval attributes. Such LDAP attributes are used quite exclusively in Microsoft Active Directory environments.

Editor for Microsoft intervalattributes

Actually, these attributes are marked in the AD directory schema with the attribute syntax Large Integer. These are signed numeric values which can be huge values (from -2^63 to 2^63-1).
In some cases, a large integer value has to be interpreted as a time interval. Time intervals are always negative numbers. Their absolute value can be read as a Microsoft Filetime structure then, expressing 100-nanosecond steps which determine the length of the time interval.

Some interesting time interval attributes in AD environments (for example parameters for the password policies in an AD domain) are Large Integers which have to be interpreted as an interval. Since this internal characteristics are not expressed in the directory schema, LEX has to hold a list of names of such attributes.

In the top area of this dialog, you see the distinguished name and type icon for the object whose attribute your are editing. In the line beneath, the attribute name is shown.

You see for input fields for expressing a time interval with days, hours, minutes and seconds. The button Set to "Never" enables you to set an important special value which is often used by Microsoft in such interval attributes, for example in expiration values in password policies. If you set an attribute to 'Never', all values are set to 0.

Editing the raw Microsoft timestamp data

If you opened a MS timestamp attribute with this editor dialog, you can also display and edit the interval data in it's numeric (Large Integer) form if you want: Just press on the Raw label in the bottom left corner of the dialog. The editor is switched to an text editor then:

Editing the raw Microsoft interval data

You can enter any decimal number between

-9223372036854775808 (-2^63)
and
9223372036854775807 (2^63 - 1)

When will the Microsoft timestamp editor will be used?

Since the internal characteristics of a large integer representing an interval value are not expressed in the directory schema, LEX has to hold a list of names of such attributes. Whenever an attribute of that list is to be shown or edited, LEX shows it in the editor for Microsoft interval attributes.

You can configure this list in the Tools - Options - Attribute Syntaxes tab with the Interval Attributes button. Normally you will not have to work hard on this list because all the standard Large Integer attributes which are interval values are predefined as default here.:

Setting the list of MS interval attributes