The PingDirectory Server provides initialization mechanisms to import database files. The import-ldif command-line tool imports data from an LDAP Data Interchange Format (LDIF) file. The data imported by the import-ldif command can include all or a portion of the entries (a subset of the entries or a subset of the attributes within entries or both) contained in the LDIF file. The command also supports importing data that has been compressed, encrypted or digitally signed or both.

The import-ldif utility can be run with the server offline or online. If the server is online, administrators can initiate the import from a local or remote client. The LDIF file that contains the import data must exist on the server system. During an online import, the target database repository, or backend, will be removed from service and data held in that backend will not be available to clients.

The import-ldif tool has been modified to help guard against accidental overwriting of existing backend data with the addition of the --overwriteExistingEntries option. This option must be present when performing an import into a backend with a branch that already contains entries (although the option is not needed if a branch contains just a single base entry).