Re: Status of LDIF and Changelog?

[Peter Buonora <pbuonora@openfoundations.com>]

No doubt,. LDIF.

Paul Leach wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Chris Harding [mailto:c.harding@opengroup.org]
> > Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 1998 1:51 AM
> > To: ietf-ldapext@netscape.com
> > Subject: RE: Status of LDIF and Changelog?
> >
> >
> > Hi -
> >
> > At 15:23 16/11/98 -0800, Paul Leach wrote:
> >
> >   . . .
> >
> > >Also, because XML is being rapidly accepted for use in the
> > Web, it is likely
> > >to be very widespread. I was at Barnes and Noble, and there
> > are already a
> > >half-dozen books on it.
> > >
> > This isn't necessarily the best criterion for making
> > something a standard
> > (look at all the books there used to be on SGML :-). If you
> > could point to
> > half a dozen major implementations of LDAP that used an XML
> > file format for
> > data interchange, that would be a good reason to standardize it. At
> > present, you can probably point to twice that number of
> > implementations
> > using LDIF, which says to me that LDIF is the right thing to
> > standardize now.
>
> We aren't disagreeing much. In my previous message, I said that a it would
> be good to standardize current practice, but that I'd like to see
> improvements go on the XML path.
>
> >
> > Having said which, I agree that XML is potentially a better
> > basis for an
> > interchange mechanism - at least as regards textual data (I'm
> > not so sure
> > how it would cope with non-textual values).
>
> It has provisions for non-text values.
>
>  It has nicer ways
> > of delimiting
> > entries and handling attributes, and it can cope with
> > non-ASCII character
> > encodings. It would be particularly strong for textual
> > information if the
> > major word processors were able to work well in XML-native
> > mode. This is a
> > hurdle that they couldn't quite jump for SGML, but perhaps XML is
> > sufficiently simpler that they can do it.
>
> Like MS Office 2000? Its native document formats are XML.
>
> >
> > As regards transformation of data from existing 'phone books
> > etc., XML is
> > at present much less easy to work with than the LDIF format. This is a
> > matter of the right tools being developed (I understand that
> > there are some
> > PERL-based ones for SGML which probably work on XML also) and
> > of people
> > gaining familiarity with them.
> >
> > So perhaps there should be discussion on an XML format,
> > leading to Internet
> > drafts and trial implementations, with a standard in prospect
> > in a couple
> > of years' time?
>
> I don't think it should take that long. If we were inventing a new
> representation, I'd agree. But XML exists, and almost by definition, the XML
> representation has to totally preserve the semantics of the ASN.1
> representation. That reduces the task to one one of describing the rules for
> making said transformations: non-trivial, but clearly easier than both
> inventing a new representation _and_ creating such transformation rules.
>
> Paul

--

Peter Buonora
Founder, Lead Engineer
Open Foundations

Tel: 617-605-8952

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