OBSOLETE field (was: schema-08 notes)

[Hallvard B Furuseth <h.b.furuseth@usit.uio.no>]

Kurt D. Zeilenga writes:
>At 04:12 PM 3/25/2005, Andrew Sciberras wrote:
>>Hallvard B Furuseth wrote:
>>>schema-08 says:
>>>>2.36  teletexTerminalIdentifier
>>>>
>>>>  The withdrawal of Rec. F.200 has resulted in the withdrawal of this
>>>>  attribute.
>>>
>>>So, insert 'OBSOLETE' in the attribute definition below?
>
> No!  OBSOLETE means obsolete in the subtree, hence whether to
> mark the element as OBSOLETE in the subschema should be left to
> the administrator.  (IIRC, we've discussed this before.)

Found it.  It was removed from the drafts after your message
<http://www.openldap.org/lists/ietf-ldapbis/200012/msg00055.html>
and discussed again in "Question on Your Comment" in Nov 2001 ending
with <http://www.openldap.org/lists/ietf-ldapbis/200111/msg00029.html>.
That thread seems to have been lost after that, for I cannot find this
information in the drafts.  It seems to belong in [Models] now, but that
just says

        [ SP "OBSOLETE" ]          ; not active
    OBSOLETE indicates this <whatever> is not active;

"not active in the subschema" would be more informative.

Still, as far as I can tell it might make sense to add both your text
and Kathy's text which you quoted in the last message in the thread.
Though your message is in response to Kathy's, I don't quite see how
it addresses her concern:

At 02:38 16 Nov 2001, Kurt D. Zeilenga wrote:
> Subject: Re: Question on Your Comment
>
> X.511(93), 14.7 says:
>   A number of subschema policy operational attributes defined
>   in the following clauses contain an obsolete component.  This
>   component is used to indicate whether the definition is active
>   or obsolete in the subschema administrative area.
>
> Hence, I suggest you paraphrase this for 2252bis:
>   The OBSOLETE term is used to indicate whether the definition
>   is active or obsolete in the subschema.  Only active
>   definitions regulate the directory [X.511].
>
> Kurt
>
> At 02:38 PM 2001-11-14, Kathy Dally wrote:
>> Hi Kurt and Steven!
>>
>> My conclusion concerning the OBSOLETE field is that a server can return
>> a value of any of the schema element attributes (e.g., attributeTypes,
>> nameForms) with the substring "OBSOLETE" included or not without regard
>> to whether or not the BNF definition of the element includes the word
>> "OBSOLETE". 
>>
>> In RFCs 2252 and 2256 (and 2251), this field is not discussed, relying
>> entirely on the X.500 semantics.  In X.501, an OBSOLETE field is defined
>> only in the syntaxes of the schema definition operational attributes and
>> is cannot appear in any "paper" attribute specifications.  LDAPv3,
>> however, put the OBSOLETE field into the directory object superclass
>> definition of attributes.  This allows an OBSOLETE field to be defined
>> in any attribute specification separately from the syntax of the
>> attribute.  This means that a user attribute type can be written as:
>>
>>        ( 1.2.3.4.5.6 NAME 'newAttr'
>>          OBSOLETE
>>          SYNTAX 1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.15 )
>>
>> In this case, what would OBSOLETE mean in the standard or documentation?
>>
>> It seems to me that RFC 2252bis should explicitly state that the
>> OBSOLETE field cannot occur in any written attribute specifications.  It
>> should also, refer to the X.501 "OBSOLETE mechanism".  Otherwise, I fear
>> an interoperability problem with LDAP implementations that make some
>> proprietary use of the OBSOLETE field.
>>
>> Thanks for your help,
>> Kathy

(snipping the rest of the thread)

-- 
Hallvard