Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)

Attribute Inheritance

In a similar way, attributes themselves can list a parent attribute during their definition. The attribute will then inherit the properties that were set in the parent attribute.

This is often used for making more specific versions of a general attribute. For instance, a surname is a type of name and can use all of the same methods to compare and check for equality. It can inherit these qualities to get the general form of a "name" attribute. In fact, the actual surname definition may contain little more than a pointer back to the parent attribute.

This is useful because it allows for the creation of a specific attribute that is useful for people interpreting the element, even when its general form remains unchanged. The inheritance of the surname attribute we discussed here helps people distinguish between a surname and a more general name, but other than the value's meaning, there is little difference between a surname and name to the LDAP system.