IX500DistinguishedName interface (certenroll.h)

The IX500DistinguishedName interface represents an X.500 distinguished name (DN). The X.500 series of networking standards covers electronic directory services. A distinguished name uniquely identifies (distinguishes) each entry in the directory from all other entries. Each DN consists of one or more relative distinguished names (RDNs).

The subject field of a PKCS #10 certificate request contains the DN of the entity requesting the certificate

CertificationRequestInfo ::= SEQUENCE 
{
   version                 CertificationRequestInfoVersion,
   subject                 Name,
   subjectPublicKeyInfo    SubjectPublicKeyInfo,
   attributes              [0] IMPLICIT Attributes
}

The DN consists of a sequence of RDNs. Each RDN consists of a set of attributes, and each attribute consists of an object identifier (OID) and a value. The data type of the value is identified by the DirectoryString structure.

Name ::= SEQUENCE OF RelativeDistinguishedName

RelativeDistinguishedName ::= SET OF AttributeTypeValue

AttributeTypeValue ::= SEQUENCE 
{
   type       EncodedObjectID,
   value      ANY 
}

DirectoryString ::= CHOICE 
{
   teletexString           TeletexString (SIZE (1..MAX)),
   printableString         PrintableString (SIZE (1..MAX)),
   universalString         UniversalString (SIZE (1..MAX)),
   utf8String              UTF8String (SIZE (1..MAX)),
   bmpString               BMPString (SIZE (1..MAX)) 
}

The following RDN keys and associated OIDs are currently supported.

Key	OID	Description	RDN type
C	XCN_OID_COUNTRY_NAME	Contains a two-letter ISO 3166 country or region code.	PrintableString
CN	XCN_OID_COMMON_NAME	Contains a common name.	PrintableString
EEMAIL	XCN_OID_RSA_emailAddr	Contains an email address.	IA5String
DC	XCN_OID_DOMAIN_COMPONENT	Contains one component of a Domain Name System (DNS) name.	IA5String
GGivenName	XCN_OID_GIVEN_NAME	Contains the part of a person's name that is not a surname.	PrintableString
I	XCN_OID_INITIALS	Contains a person's initials.	PrintableString
L	XCN_OID_LOCALITY_NAME	Contains the locality name that identifies a city, country, or other geographic region.	PrintableString
O	XCN_OID_ORGANIZATION_NAME	Contains the name of an organization.	PrintableString
OU	XCN_OID_ORGANIZATIONAL_UNIT_NAME	Contains the name of a unit subdivision within an organization.	PrintableString
SST	XCN_OID_STATE_OR_PROVINCE_NAME	Contains the full name of a state or province.	PrintableString
STREET	XCN_OID_STREET_ADDRESS	Contains the physical address.	PrintableString
SN	XCN_OID_SUR_NAME	Contains the family name of a person.	PrintableString
TTITLE	XCN_OID_TITLE	Contains the title of a person in the organization.	PrintableString

 

Each service that is based on X.500 defines its own distinguished name string representation. For example, LDAP uses a comma-delimited list arranged from right to left. Active Directory uses a forward slash (/) and arranges the list from left to right. Other services use semicolons as separators. The following example shows an Active Directory entry for an employee named John Peoples who works in the pharmaceutical division of a company named Contoso, Ltd.

/c=gb/o=Contoso Ltd./ou=Contoso Pharmaceuticals/cn=John Peoples

Inheritance

The IX500DistinguishedName interface inherits from the IDispatch interface. IX500DistinguishedName also has these types of members:

Methods

The IX500DistinguishedName interface has these methods.

IX500DistinguishedName::Decode Initializes the object from a Unicode-encoded distinguished name.
IX500DistinguishedName::Encode Initializes the object from a string that contains a distinguished name.
IX500DistinguishedName::get_EncodedName Retrieves a Unicode-encoded distinguished name.
IX500DistinguishedName::get_Name Retrieves a distinguished name.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Windows Vista [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server	Windows Server 2008 [desktop apps only]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	certenroll.h

See also

CertEnroll Interfaces

IDispatch

Subject Names