About working with referrals
A referral is a redirection mechanism that tells client applications that a requested entry or set of entries is not present on the PingDirectory server but can be accessed on another server.
Use referrals when entries are located on another server. The PingDirectory server implements two types of referrals depending on the requirement:
- Referral on Update plugin
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The PingDirectory server provides a Referral on Update plugin to create any referrals for update requests, such as
add,delete,modify, ormoddnoperations, on read-only servers. For example, given two replicated PingDirectory servers where one server is a primary with read-write capabilities, and the other is a read-only server. You can configure a referral for any client update requests on the second PingDirectory server to point to the primary server. For example, if a client application sends an add request on the second PingDirectory server, the PingDirectory server responds with a referral that indicates any updates should be made on the primary server. All read requests on the read-only server process normally. - Smart referrals
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The PingDirectory server supports smart referrals that map an entry or a specific branch of a directory information tree (DIT) to an LDAP URL. Any client requests (reads or writes) targeting at or below the branch of the DIT send a referral to the server designated in the LDAP URL.