1.3 Structure Overview (Synopsis)

Address book files are produced daily by the Address Book Server. These files represent a daily snapshot of the user object, contact and group object in the Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), represented as a set of address book contacts in the address book files. The address book files are stored in a file system folder that contains the most recent N days of address book files, where N is greater than 0. Client applications can schedule daily downloads of the address book file for local, incremental searching of users, contacts, and groups based on various fields in the file. Client applications can also use the data in the address book file to perform reverse number lookup for incoming calls from other clients.

Clients access the address book files by using the HTTP GET method. Clients construct the URL of the latest address book file by concatenating the base URL they receive as part of in-band provisioning with the address book file name constructed from the date. The file name is constructed as follows:

F-XXXX.lsabs

D-XXXX-YYYY.lsabs

C-XXXX-YYYY.lsabs<1>

F-XXXX.dabs

D-XXXX-YYYY.dabs

Where:

§ XXXX and YYYY are 4-digit hexadecimal values that represent dates as the 0-based number of days after January 1, 2001, 00:00:00 UTC. For example, F-0A8C.lsabs would be the address book file for Saturday, May 24, 2008.

§ File names that begin with F-XXXX are called full files and contain all user object, contact and group objects that exist on a given day.

§ Files that begin with D-XXXX-YYYY are called delta files and represent the difference between two full files (F-XXXX.ext and F-YYYY.ext), where XXXX is less than YYYY. A delta file contains new and changed user object, contact and group objects, as well as deleted user objects, contact and group objects.

§ Files that begin with C-XXXX-YYYY are called compact delta files and represent the difference between two full files (F-XXXX.lsabs and F-YYYY.lsabs), where XXXX is less than YYYY. A compact delta file contains new and deleted user objects, contacts (3), and group objects (2), as well as the specific attribute changes for changed user objects, contacts (3), and group objects (2).<2>

§ Files with the .lsabs extension contain, for each user object, contacts, and group objects, all attributes that would be of interest to an end user.

§ Files with the .dabs extension contain a minimal subset of attributes that would be useful to a physical device with limited memory, such as a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) phone client. Also, group objects (2) are never included in device-specific address book files, so setting this flag on the groupType attribute will have no effect.