RE: DN "a published table" clarification

["Kurt D. Zeilenga" <Kurt@OpenLDAP.org>]

At 12:36 PM 12/22/00 -0600, Ryan Moats wrote:
>I will repeat my assertion that "whatever" the final table becomes,
>if there isn't an escape clause to allow other attribute types
>to be specified as the RDN (and thus a example of two independent
>implementations that allow that), the whole concept is DOA because
>you are taking away functionality from folks who are using directories
>as well as hamstringing other working groups.

I will repeat my assertion any DN specification which does not
provide an unambiguous string representation of a distinguished
name which can be encoded and decoded with ease is DOA.

RFC 2253 and RFC 1779 place significant restrictions upon their
use of attribute type name strings because attribute type name
strings are, by their very nature, ambiguous.  Both of these
specifications rely on exhaustive published tables to ensure
the use of attribute type names does not result in an
unambiguous DN representation.  This approach is widely
believed to be sound.

There may be other approaches which are technically better.
If there is a better approach for providing unambiguous
string presentations, I would suggest that someone provide
a description of the approach.  In particular, the description
should state how provide for unambiguous use of attribute types
names.

Kurt

Kurt