What are CN, OU, DC?

From RFC2253 (UTF-8 String Representation of Distinguished Names):

String  X.500 AttributeType

---

CN commonName
L localityName
ST stateOrProvinceName
O organizationName
OU organizationalUnitName
C countryName
STREET streetAddress
DC domainComponent
UID userid

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What does the string from that query mean?

The string ("CN=Dev-India,OU=Distribution Groups,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com") is a path from an hierarchical structure (DIT = Directory Information Tree) and should be read from right (root) to left (leaf).

It is a DN (Distinguished Name) (a series of comma-separated key/value pairs used to identify entries uniquely in the directory hierarchy). The DN is actually the entry's fully qualified name.

Here you can see an example where I added some more possible entries.<br/>
The actual path is represented using green.

The following paths represent DNs (and their value depends on what you want to get after the query is run):

• "DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com"
• "OU=Distribution Groups,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com"
• "OU=People,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com"
• "OU=Groups,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com"
• "CN=QA-USA,OU=Distribution Groups,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com"
• "CN=Dev-India,OU=Distribution Groups,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com"
• "CN=Ted Owen,OU=People,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com"