Re: DN-alt issues

[mcs@netscape.com (Mark C Smith)]

RL 'Bob' Morgan wrote:

> If the "published table" had been well-established and had actually been
> extended since 2252 was published, then we wouldn't be talking about
> changing its nature.  But it's the lack of clarity on what the table is in
> the first place that's the reason we're discussing it.  Deciding that a
> table that in practice has never been extended is now by definition
> non-extensible is within scope, in my opinion.

I agree, but we could also agree on a new definition for the table. Our 
goal is clarity and interoperability, but we also do not want to 
retroactively label a lot of LDAP deployments as "non standard" if we do 
not have to. One  approach would be to say that strings may be used in 
DNs instead of OIDs for any attribute type that is defined in a document 
that is part of the LDAP technical standard. That would widen the 
"table" to, for example, include attribute types from 
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ldapbis-user-schema-02.txt.

Note that this does not pull in all of the types that the PKIX group 
wants to use in DNs, and that there may still be interoperability issues 
because most of the types in the user schema draft are categorized as 
SHOULD recognize while use of strings for the types listed in the small 
table that is currently in the DN representation draft is in my opinion 
mandatory (although the word MUST is not used; the actual wording is "If 
the AttributeType is in the following table ... then the type name 
string from that table is used...").

--
Mark Smith
Netscape Directory Product Development
My words are my own, not my employer's.