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Attribute Editors

LEX comes with a bunch of attribute editors which can decode the different types of attribute data types. This topic describes all the editor dialogs which appear if you open an attribute to edit it's value or just to observe the attribute's content. The same editors are used if you want to create a new attribute for an object or if you want to add a new value member to a multi valued attribute.

There are two different types of attribute editors:

Editors for handling generic attribute syntaxes which are defined in the directory schema. These attribute syntaxes can be defined in the LDAP specifications in RFC 4517, or they are proprietary definitions from different manufacturers. So if LEX knows from the schema that an attribute has a certain syntax, it handles this with the appropriate editor:
Editors for handling of attributes which encodes complex data types, specified by proprietary definitions from different manufacturers. Although they are marked in the schema with a generic syntax, their content can be interpreted by LEX accordingly with special editors:

The decision what editor type is used for a certain attribute is made by LEX based on the following information:

If the directory schema could be evaluated, LEX searches for the attribute type entries in the schema to determine the attribute syntax.
The name of the attribute plays an important role, because some attribute have to be handled differently no matter what the schema says - for example if there are bitmaps or passwords encoded in normal binary attributes, or if date and time intervals are encoded in numeric values.
If the LDAP server type could be detected by LEX, this information will be used as well in the decision process, together with some basic knowledge about operational attributes mentioned in the LDAP RFCs - for example creationTimestamp or modifyTimestamp.