JNDI 1.2: JNDI Changes Since JNDI 1.1

• Added javax.naming.event package.
• Added javax.naming.ldap package.
• Added support for configuration using resource files. See Chapter 6 of the JNDI API document.

API-related Changes

• Added NamingEnumeration.close() for cancelling or terminating enumerations.
• Added ReferralException.getReferralContext(Hashtable env) and ReferralException.retryReferral() to allow creation and retry of referral context with different environment properties.
• Clarified how context methods that accept Name argument should deal with CompositeName and nonCompositeName arguments. Specifically, instances of CompositeName are treated as composite name, while al l others are treated as compound name.
• Added Context.getNameInNamespace() for retrieving the full name of a context within its own namespace.
• Clarified definition of the class factory location of a Reference object. Specifically, the location is a codebase, which consists of a list space-separated URLs.
• Added support for ordered multivalued attributes to Attribute and BasicAttribute.
• Added BasicAttributes.equals() and BasicAttributes.hashCode().
• Redefined semantics of DirContext.getSchemaClassDefinition() so that it returns a context that contains the DirContext objects of class definitions, rather than returning one (arbitrary) class definition.
• Added protected InitialContext/InitialDirContext constructors to allow lazy initialization. Useful for subclass implementations.

SPI-related Changes

• Added StateFactory/NamingManager.getStateToBind(), analogous to ObjectFactory/NamingManager.getObjectInstance(), for transforming an object's state before the object is bound in the naming/directory service.
• Added interfaces DirObjectFactory and DirStateFactory to better support service providers that implement the DirContext interface. Added DirectoryManager.getObjectInstance() and DirectoryManager.getStateToStore() to use these interfaces.
• Refined definition of NamingManager.getObjectInstance() to not treat URL strings specially. Instead, the URL should be wrapped inside a Reference whose RefAddr type is "URL".
• Made ResolveResult implement Serializable.
• Defined a special form of Reference called a next naming system (nns) reference for supporting "dynamic federation". This reference has a RefAddr type of "nns" and a content consisting of the resolved object.
• Added the string constant NamingManager.CPE which names a property set by NamingManager.getContinuationContext()/DirectoryManager.getContinuationContext(). The value of this property is an instance of CannotProceedException. This is useful to service providers that implement federation by chaining the CPEs.
• Defined a convention for service providers to use when naming environment properties. See Section 6.1.