The
Storing Objects in the Directory 
lesson gave examples of binding several types of objects.
What if you want to bind yet another type of object that differs
from all of the types shown so far?
What determines the types of objects that a service provider
is willing to bind?
The JNDI provides a general framework for transforming objects supplied to
Context.bind()
and related methods into a format acceptable to a service provider.
This framework uses
state factories.
A state factory transforms an object into another object.
The input is the object and optional attributes, supplied to
Context.bind() and the output is another object and optional attributes,
to be stored in the underlying naming service or directory.
A service provider can be preconfigured with a set of state factories.
For example, Sun's LDAP service provider has state factories for
storing RMI and CORBA objects.
The application can configure additional state factories
for a service provider to use.
This lesson first describes
how to write a state factory.
It then discusses how service providers
use state factories and concludes with an example of
how to write a custom state factory.
