aqs.org/rfcs/rfc2251.html"> RFC 2251 has to say about it:
4.1.11. Referral The referral error indicates that the contacted server does not hold the target entry of the request. The referral field is present in an LDAPResult if the LDAPResult.resultCode field value is referral, and absent with all other result codes. It contains a reference to another server (or set of servers) which may be accessed via LDAP or other protocols. Referrals can be returned in response to any operation request (except unbind and abandon which do not have responses). At least one URL MUST be present in the Referral. The referral is not returned for a singleLevel or wholeSubtree search in which the search scope spans multiple naming contexts, and several different servers would need to be contacted to complete the operation. Instead, continuation references, described in section 4.5.3, are returned. Referral ::= SEQUENCE OF LDAPURL -- one or more LDAPURL ::= LDAPString -- limited to characters permitted in URLs If the client wishes to progress the operation, it MUST follow the referral by contacting any one of servers. All the URLs MUST be equally capable of being used to progress the operation. (The mechanisms for how this is achieved by multiple servers are outside the scope of this document.) URLs for servers implementing the LDAP protocol are written according to <a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2255.html">[9]</a>. If an alias was dereferenced, the <dn> part of the URL MUST be present, with the new target object name. If the <dn> part is present, the client MUST use this name in its next request to progress the operation, and if it is not present the client will use the same name as in the original request. Some servers (e.g. participating in distributed indexing) may provide a different filter in a referral for a search operation. If the filter part of the URL is present in an LDAPURL, the client MUST use this filter in its next request to progress this search, and if it is not present the client MUST use the same filter as it used for that search. Other aspects of the new request may be the same or different as the request which generated the referral. Note that UTF-8 characters appearing in a DN or search filter may not be legal for URLs (e.g. spaces) and MUST be escaped using the % method in RFC 1738 <a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1738.html">[7]</a>. Other kinds of URLs may be returned, so long as the operation could be performed using that protocol.
@author
Apache Directory Project
@version $Rev: 761643 $TODO This interface should be located in a url package under common to be constructed from a LDAPv3 URL parser. The interface will eventually look very different once url support is added: for one it will add and remove LdapUrl objects instead of strings or provide both string and LdapUrl add/remove methods.