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Re: mailRecipient
[ longer reply because OpenLDAP ships a "misc.schema" related to this
topic ]
On Tue, 15 Jan 2002, Kurt D. Zeilenga wrote:
: At 10:01 AM 2002-01-15, Joshua Gramlich wrote:
: >Could someone please point me in the right direction to find a standard
: >schema file for the mailRecipient objectclass. I've looked for
: >something like this for hours but have only found references to it
: >rather than the actual schema file that I'm looking for. As far as I
: >can tell, it is not defined within any schema files that come with
: >OpenLDAP...
The "mailRecipient" objectclass is documented on the Netscape server;
http://devedge.netscape.com/docs/manuals/index.html?content=directory.html
: IIRC, mailRecipient is deprecated in favor of inetLocalMailRecipient,
: part of the LASER schema. But, of course, inetLocalMailRecipient
: (and mailRecipient) are works in progress (I-D detailing each are
: expired) and appropriate caution should be taken to avoid
: conflicting with final (if ever progressed) publication.
I would suggest that "depreciated" is a bit strong. LASER is not going
anywhere currently, and is not finished enough, or even agreed upon
enough to make it to "informational" (my opinion).
: Portions of the LASER schema are provided in misc.schema.
The OID's in misc.schema should not be trusted. In particular, the
LASER spec never assigned OID's for the objectclass
"InetLocalMailRecipient" or the attribute "mailLocalAddress". The rest
of the attributes are all defined my Netscape and are their published
OIDs.
The sticking point was over using "mailLocalAddress" vs
"(|(mail)(mailAlternateAddress))". Clients that use LDAP for filling
in To: or CC: fields default to using the "mail" attribute (as is
defined in the "mailRecipient" objectclass. Thus, there is a strong
argument for using the "mail" attribute to route email (i.e. the
client uses it to fill in the address, so the MTA should check this
attribute to complete the route. The LASER group essentially just
dropped the "mail" attribute and changed the name
"mailAlternateAddress" to "mailLocalAddress" since it was no longer
"alternate", being a single multi-valued attribute.
At least some of us who have had to deploy LDAP mailrouting to sites
whose clients use LDAP lookups to send messages to each other (as
opposed to ISPs) have come to prefer the capabilities of Netscape's
"mailRecipient" objectclass, and no longer recommend using LASER.
The other side argues that since "mail" was labeled as a "white pages"
attribute back in x.500 days that it could not be used for mailrouting
(ignoring that Mail User Agents are happily using and depending on
this for their default lookups, and proper mailaddressing is alot more
interesting then whitepages usage). You can see the kind of impass
this sort of issue can create for a "standard".
Randall