8.3 Comparing the History of an Object or Attribute

You can use the Objects Compare tool to compare changes in an object or its attribute over time. You can enable or disable the compare tool in one of the following two ways:

  • Click Objects Compare in the left navigation pane.

  • Click the Compare toggle button at the top of the preview pane on the History Browser page.

To compare the history of an object or attribute, perform the following steps:

  1. Go to the ACDI home page and select Time Machine to review snapshots of the LDAP server over a specified time. For example, the last 7 days. For more information, seeUsing Time Machine to Review Snapshots.

  2. Click History Browser.

    The timeline created by the Time Machine appears in a horizontal format at the top of the preview pane on the History Browser page.

  3. In the Search object field, specify the name of the object whose history you want to compare.

    For example, to compare a group CN=admin, specify admin.

  4. Select the group object (cn=admin,ou=group,o=system) from the search result. The attributes and values for this group are displayed in the right preview pane.

    Let us assume you want to check the changes in the group membership, which is the member attribute of the admin group over the period.

  5. In the Search by attribute or value field, type member.

  6. Select Objects Compare in the left navigation pane.

    You can click the Minimize to toolbar icon to minimize the search object toolbar. The preview pane displays the data divided into three columns. The first column shows the object or attribute selected for comparison. The other two columns show the values for different dates and times.

  7. Select a date and time in the DateTime picker and Secondary DateTime picker to compare.

    You can define which snapshot connection you want to use to compare or directly compare through LDAP.

  8. To only view the changed values, click the Options icon and select the Show only not equal option.

    Let us assume that the member attribute of the user Valerius has changed. To find what values have changed for this user, disable the Compare toggle button. Click Back to the previous object. It will display the modified attributes of Valerius.