Java Glossary : JNDI

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Java Naming and Directory Interface. A multi-platform way to get at directories and files. It is used by EJB to find objects. It also lets you get at the DNS records, e.g. the MX record that lets you find out the mailserver corresponding to a given domain. See the javax.naming.directory package. JNDI is a very general purpose directory scheme. It handles: LDAP, DNS, NIS, NDS, RMI and CORBA, which ability to plug in more.

JNDI Documentation : available:

on the web at java.Sun.com
on J: in the JDK 1.4.2_04: J:\j2sdk1.4.2_04\docs\guide\jndi\jndi-dns.html
on J: in the JDK 1.5 beta: J:\Program Files\Java\j2sdk1.5.0\docs\guide\jndi\jndi-dns.html

To get at DNS information you create URLs like this: dns://mynamerver.com/mindprod.com. You feed these strange URLs to javax.naming.directory.Attributes.DirContext.getAttributes(). This is a double barrel URL:

The first part is DNS server that:
1. you are permitted to use.
2. has up to date info on the domain of interest.
3. Is reasonably close by.
It may be specified as a domain name or as an IP.
The second part after the / is the domain whose mail server or other DNS information interests you. You must specify the domain name, not the IP of a server in the domain.

JNDI tutorial

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