Integrated Directory Services Working Group T. Genovese
draft-ietf-ids-iwps-schema-spec-01.txt Microsoft
Expires: 11 December 1996 11 June 1995
A Common Schema for the Internet White Pages Service
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working
documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), it areas,
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Overview
The IETF Integrated Directory Services (IDS) Working Group proposes to
establish a specification for a simple Internet white pages service.
To facilitate this effort it would be helpful to have a common schema
used by the various white page servers. This document is designed to
specify the basic set of attributes to be used for a white page entry
for a person. This schema does not describe how to represent other
objects in the White page service. It does describe how new objects
can be defined and registered. This schema is independent of
implementations of the White Page service.
1.0 Introduction
The Internet community has stated that there is a need for the
development and deployment of a White Page service. This service
would be used to locate information about people in the Internet[PA94].
To facilitate interoperibility and a common user experience the
Internet White Pages service needs to have a common set of information
about each person.
This Document will focus only on common information
modeling issues to which all IWPS providers must conform. To insure
a consistent User experience of this service we need to define a common
User object. This will allow a User to go between different
implementations
of the service and have a consistent expectation asto what information
can be found about people on the Internet. Developers of this service
need to have an unambiguous method of representing the Information
objects
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managed by the service. This will help facilitate interoperability and
data management.
2.0 Scope
This document will establish the set of attributes that specify the
common
user information object for the IWPS. It will not attempt to be an
exhaustive specification of all objects that will be stored in the IWPS.
The
process used by this document to define the User object will be used to
define all other information objects used in the IWPS.
This document will not specify rules with respect to information
privacy.
Each country has its own set of laws and practices. The best work
covering
this area was done by NADF [NADF92]. It makes recommendations for the
USA
Canada.
3.0 IWPS Schema Considerations
The information object description requirements for the IWPS
consists of the following:
1. Syntax for definition/representation of Information
Object Templates.
2. Registration procedures for information object
Templates, etc.
3. Database structure or schema.
Items 1 and 2 will be covered in this Document. Database structure
because, it will potentially restrict implementations (i.e. X.500
schema based Vs DNS schema based) will not be defined in this
document. This area is a separate Research topic and will be covered
in its own document.
3.1 Syntax for definition/representation of Information objects
A clear, precise and consistent method must be used when information
object Templates and their associated attributes are discussed within
the context of IWPS. There are two possible methods to do this. i.e.
1. BNF
2. ASN.1
The Working Group has recommended the use of ASN.1. It provides us with
a set of defined attributes and encoding syntax's. Also, it is well
documented and widely available.
The use of ASN.1 to specify the attributes of the information objects
does not imply the use of Basic Encoding Rules (BER) for any IWPS
servers protocols. The use of Object inheritance is not used or
specified by this document.
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The IWP person object specifies a set of recommended attributes that
a White Page service should include. It recommends storage sizes, but
does not recommend storage types. How an implementation stores the user
attributes is a local issue. The Syntax listed with the attributes are
provided so the developers of UIs will have a consistent expectation.
This document does not specify a Director access protocols (i.e. whoi++,
LDAP,DAP, etc.) or how the UI is to display these attributes.
Attributes that contain textual information that must be split over
multiple
lines (i.e. Postal address) will use the procedure defined in RFC 822 in
section 3.1.1 on "folding" long header lines [RFC-822].
For International localization it is recommended that attributes (except
email addresses) used to identify people use DirectoryString syntax
defined
by LDAP [LDAP-A].
3.2 Publishing of IWPS Information object Templates.
The Working Group recommends publication of all information object
Templates
used for the IWPS. To facilitate distribution of IWPS information object
Templates they should be made available on the Internet information
server (i.e. InterNIC). At a minimum it is recommended that any new
information object Template that will be made available via the IWPS
will be published as a RFC.
Individual organizations may define information object Templates that
are only local in scope. This may be needed to meet local
organizational needs. All information that the organization wishes
to be part of the IWPS must use an IWPS published information object
Template.
5.0 Data Integrity
The question of Data Integrity was first addressed in RFC1107 [KS89].
It basically states, that if the information is out of date it is
useless and the service will not be used. Therefore, a clear
requirement is that any production IWPS provider must insure that all
data is reasonably correct and current.
To facilitate the User in determining the quality of the data that
has been retrieved it is recommended that the optional Ancillary
attributes of the IWPS person Template be supported. This would require
the IWPS UA to be able to retrieve and display this information. This
may be done as a separate operation from the fetch of the information
object. The Ancillary Attributes are defined in Appendix A. It is
further
recommended that any new information object Template include as a
minimum
the Ancillary attributes as an optional set of attributes. It would
then
be left to the IWPS servers to optionally support the storage and
retrieval
of this data.
The Ancillary attributes have been designed to provide the following
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information about the information object with which it is associated:
1. The date and time of the last modification.
2. Who performed the last modification.
3. Who owns or is responsible for the data stored
in the information object.
4. What is the official source of the data.
7.0 References
[LDAP-A] Wahl, M., Coulbeck, A., Howes, T., Kille, S., "Lightweight
Directory Access Protocol: Standard and Pilot Attribute Definitions",
Draft-ietf-asid-ldapv3-attributes-01.txt, June, 1996
[KS89] Sollins, K., "A Plan for Internet Directory Services", RFC
1107, Laboratory for Computer Science, MIT, July 1989.
[NADF92] North American Directory Forum, "User Bill of Rights for
entries and listings in the Public Directory', RFC 1295,
North American Directory Forum, January 1992.
[PA94] Postel, J., Anderson, C., "WHITE PAGES MEETING REPORT", RFC
1588, University of Southern California, February 1994.
[RFC-822] Crocker, D., "Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet
Text Messages", STD 11, RFC 822, August 1982.
8.0 Authors Address
Tony Genovese
The Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft way
Redmond, Washington 98007
USA
Phone: (206) 703-0852
EMail: TonyG@Microsoft.com
Appendix A Information Object Template Definitions
This appendix contains the IWPS Person Information Object Template and
its associated attributes. The Person Object is a simple list of
attributes,
no structure or object inheritance is implied. All size recommendations
are
in bytes. Phone numbers should be the full international form
i.e. +1 206 703 0852.
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-- The Information Object Template for the IWPS person --
--General Attributes --
Field Name Size Syntax
Primary Email 120 CaseIgnoreString
Primary Cert 4000 Certificate
Secondary Email 120 CaseIgnoreString
Home Page 128 caseExactString
Common Name 64 DirectoryString
Given Name 48 DirectoryString
initials 12 DirectoryString
Surname 48 DirectoryString
Generation Qual 06 DirectoryString
Organization 64 DirectoryString
Locality 20 DirectoryString
Country 02 DirectoryString (ISO3166)
Language 02 DirectoryString (ISO 639)
--Personal Attributes
Telephone Number 20 PrintableString
Fax 20 PrintableString
Mobile Phone 20 PrintableString
Pager Number 20 PrintableString
Mailing Address 255 PostalAddress
Birth Date 08 PrintableString
Gender 01 PrintableString
Marital Status 01 PrintableString
Bio 255 DirectoryString
--Organizational Attributes
Title 64 DirectoryString
Office Phone 20 PrintableString
Office Fax 20 PrintableString
Office Mobile Ph 20 PrintableString
Office Pager 20 PrintableString
Mailing Address 255 PostalAddress
--Security
Password 64 Password
--Ancillary
User Id 04 Integer
Creation time 24 GeneralizedTime
Last Modified 24 GeneralizedTime
Creator Name 255 DN
Modifier Name 255 DN
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