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draft-ietf-ids-iwps-schema-spec-06.txt
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INTERNET-DRAFT
T. Genovese
Microsoft
Barbara Jennings
Sandia National Laboratory
5 June 1997
Expires: 4 December 1997
A Common Schema for the Internet White Pages Service
File Name: draft-ietf-ids-iwps-schema-spec-06.txt
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working
documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas,
and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress".
To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the
"1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet-Drafts
Shadow Directories on ds.internic.net (US East Coast), nic.nordu.net
(Europe), ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast), or munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim).
Abstract
This work is the result of the IETF Integrated Directory Services (IDS)
Working Group. The IDS Working Group proposes a standard specification
for a simple Internet White Pages service by defining a common schema for
use by the various White Pages servers. This schema is independent of
specific implementations of the White Pages service.
This document specifies the minimum set of core attributes of a White Pages
entry for an individual and describes how new objects with those attributes
can be defined and published. It does not describe how to represent other
objects in the White Pages service. Further, it does not address the search
sort expectations within a particular service.
1.0 Introduction to IWPS
The Internet community has stated a need for the development and deployment
of a White Pages service for use in locating information about people in the
Internet [PA94]. To facilitate interoperability and to provide a common user
experience, the Internet White Pages Service (IWPS) must have a common set
of information about each person.
A common user object would allow a user to go between implementations of
the service and to expect consistency in the types of information provided.
A common user object would also provide developers with an unambigious
method of representing the information managed by the service.
This document will focus only on common information modeling issues to
which all IWPS providers must conform.
2.0 Scope
This document establishes the set of attributes that specify the Common
User Information Object for the IWPS. It does not attempt to be an
exhaustive specification of all objects that may be stored in the IWPS.
The process used by this document to define the user object is recommended
to be used to define other information objects used in the IWPS.
All conforming implementations must support at the minimum, the core attributes
listed in Section 5.0. Implementations may include local attributes in addition
to the core set and still be considered "in conformance".
This document will not specify rules with respect to information privacy.
Each country has its own set of laws and practices. Previous work covering
this area has been done by the North American Directory Forum (NADF), whose
publication [NADF92] contain recommendations for registrants' rights in both the
USA and Canada.
This document does not specify a Directory access protocol (i.e. whois++,
LDAP, DAP, etc.).
3.0 IWPS Schema Considerations
The description of the IWPS information object consists of the following
requirements:
1. Syntax for definition/representation of information
object templates.
2. Publication of information object templates, etc.
3. Database structure or schema.
Items 1 and 2 will be covered in this document. Because database structure
can potentially restrict implementations (i.e. X.500 schema based versus
DNS schema based) it will be treated as a separate research topic and will
not be defined in this paper.
4.0 Syntax for Definition/Representation of Information Object Templates
A clear, precise, and consistent method must be used when discussing information
object templates and their associated attributes. Therefore, this document makes
uses of the previously defined syntax used by LDAP. To avoid restrictions on
implementations of the IWPS, some syntax are listed as requirements vs
specific encodings. The general IWPS syntax is included in section 6.0 for
reference.
The IWPS Person Object specifies a limited set of recommended attributes that
a White Pages Service must include. Storage of user attributes are a local
issue, therefore, this draft suggest storage sizes but not storage types.
This document lists the syntax with the attributes for developers of user
interface (UIs) to use as a reference, but it does not specify how the UI
should display these attributes.
Attributes that contain multiple-line text (i.e. Address) must use the
procedure defined in RFC 822 in section 3.1.1 on "folding" long header lines
[RFC-822].
5.0 Information Object Template Definitions
This section describes the IWPS Person Information Object Template
and its associated attributes. The Person Object is a simple list of
attributes, no structure nor object inheritance is implied.
IWPS client applications should use the following size recommendations as the
maximum sizes of the attributes. However, applications should be able to
handle attributes of arbitrary size, returned by a server which may not comply
with these recommendation. All size recommendations are in characters.
Note: Multi-byte languages will require larger storage allocation to achieve
the character size recommendation.
This set of attributes describes information types, and are not defined
attributes in a particular schema. Any technology deploying a White Page
service ( WHOIS ++, LDAP, vCard, etc.) will need to publish as a companion
document, their specific schema detailing how the general attributes of the
White Pages schema are expressed.
SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS
Phone number: The full international form is recommended;
i.e. +1 206 703 0852. The field may contain
additional information following the phone
number. For example:
+1 800 759 7243 #123456
+1 505 882 8080 ext. 30852
Email address: Is multivalued.
Certificate: Is multivalued.
Common Name: Is multivalued.
Language Spoken: Is multivalued.
THE INFORMATION OBJECT TEMPLATE FOR THE IWPS PERSON
--General Attributes --
Field Name Size Syntax
Email 360 Mailbox
Cert 4000 Certificate
Home Page 128 URI
Common Name 64 WhitepageString
Given Name 48 WhitepageString
Surname 48 WhitepageString
Organization 64 WhitepageString
Locality 20 WhitepageString
Country 2 WhitepageString (ISO 3166)
Language Spoken 128 WhitepageString (RFC 1766)
--Personal Attributes
Personal Phone 30 PrintableString
Personal Fax 30 PrintableString
Personal Mobile Phone 30 PrintableString
Personal Pager Number 30 PrintableString
Personal Postal Address 255 Address
Description 255 WhitepageString
--Organizational Attributes
Title 64 WhitepageString
Office Phone 30 PrintableString
Office Fax 30 PrintableString
Office Mobile Phone 30 PrintableString
Office Pager 30 PrintableString
Office Postal Address 255 Address
--Ancillary
Creation Date 24 GeneralizedTime
Creator Name 255 URI
Modified Date 24 GeneralizedTime
Modifier Name 255 URI
6.0 IWPS Person Information Object Template Syntax
This section defines the syntax used by the IWPS person information object
template. It is copied in whole from the LDAP attribute working document with
some modification for completeness.
Certificate:
The certificate field is intended to hold any kind of certificate;
X.509 certificates are one example. A specific implementation will
specify how to indicate the type of certificate when describing the
mapping of the IWPS schema onto the implementation schema.
WhitepageString:
This syntax must be able to encode arbitrary ISO 10646 characters.
One such encoding is the UTF-8 encoding [UTF-8].
GeneralizedTime:
Values of this syntax are encoded as printable strings, represented
as specified in X.208. Note that the time zone must be specified.
It is strongly recommended that Zulu time zone be used. For example:
199412161032Z
Mailbox:
There are many kinds of mailbox addresses, including X.400 and Internet
mailbox addresses. The implementation must clearly distinguish between
different types of mailbox address, for instance by using a textual
prefix or a set of attribute types. There must be a way to represent
any mailbox type.
Address:
According to Universal Postal Union standards, this field must be
able to represent at least 6 lines of 40 characters.
PrintableString:
The encoding of a value with PrintableString syntax is the string
value itself. PrintableString is limited to the characters in
production <p>. Where production <p> is described by the following:
<a> ::= 'a' | 'b' | 'c' | 'd' | 'e' | 'f' | 'g' | 'h' | 'i' |
'j' | 'k' | 'l' | 'm' | 'n' | 'o' | 'p' | 'q' | 'r' |
's' | 't' | 'u' | 'v' | 'w' | 'x' | 'y' | 'z' | 'A' |
'B' | 'C' | 'D' | 'E' | 'F' | 'G' | 'H' | 'I' | 'J' |
'K' | 'L' | 'M' | 'N' | 'O' | 'P' | 'Q' | 'R' | 'S' |
'T' | 'U' | 'V' | 'W' | 'X' | 'Y' | 'Z'
<d> ::= '0' | '1' | '2' | '3' | '4' | '5' | '6' | '7' | '8' | '9'
<p> ::= <a> | <d> | ''' | '(' | ')' | '+' | ',' | '-' | '.' |
'/' | ':' | '?' | ' '
7.0 Publication of IWPS Information Object Templates.
The Working Group recommends that all information object templates
used for the IWPS be published as an RFC at the minimum. To facilitate
distribution, these publications should be made available on an Internet
information server (i.e. InterNIC).
Individual organizations may define information object templates that
are local in scope as required to meet local organizational needs. All
information that the organization wishes to be part of the IWPS must use a
published IWPS information object template.
8.0 Data Privacy
Each country, and each state within the US, has legislation defining
information privacy. The suggested attributes in Section 5.0 may be
considered private and the directory administrator is strongly advised
to verify the privacy legislation for his domain.
As suggested in "Privacy and Accuracy in NIC Databases" [RFC 1355], each
directory provider should provide a clear statement of the purpose of the
directory, the information that should be contained in it, and a privacy
policy associated with that information. This policy should include
restrictions for data dissemination.
This policy is strongly recommended for the US and Canada and required
by many countries in the European Community for data sharing.
9.0 Data Integrity
Data Integrity was first addressed in RFC1107 [KS89], which states "a
White Pages service will not be used, if the information it provides is
out of date or incorrect." Therefore, any production IWPS provider must
insure that all data is reasonably correct and up-to-date.
The Ancillary Attributes of the IWPS person template denote the
information's source and date of origin, and the source and date of its
latest modification. They provide the user with some measurement of the
quality of data making it easy to determine the owner and freshness of the
data retrieved.
The IWPS User Agent must be able to retrieve and display Ancillary
Attributes. Retrieval and display may be done as separate operations.
The Ancillary Attributes are recommended as the minimum set of attributes for
any new information object template. Each IWPS server may individually decide
whether to support the storage and retrieval of this data.
The Ancillary Attributes (also defined in Section 5.0) provide the following
information about its associated information object:
1. The date and time the entry was created; Creation Date.
2. Owner or individual responsible for the data creation;
Creator Name.
3. The date and time of the last modification;
Modified Date.
4. Individual responsible for the last modification;
Modifier Name.
10.0 Security Considerations
Security is implementation and deployment specific and as such is not
addressed in this memo. Security must ensure that the constraints mentioned
in the Data Privacy Section 8.0 are complied with.
11.0 References
[Davis] Davis, M., UTF-8, (WG2 N1036) DAM for ISO/IEC 10646-1.
[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.
[RFC-1355] Curran, J., Marine, A., "Privacy and Accuracy Issues in Network
Information Center Databases", FYI 15, RFC 1355, August 1992.
[UCS] Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS) - Architecture
and Basic Multilingual Plane, ISO/IEC 10646-1, 1993.
[RFC 1766] Alvestrand, H. "Tags for the Identification of Languages",
RFC 1766, March 1995.
11.0 Authors' Address
Tony Genovese
The Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, Washington 98007
USA
Phone: (206) 703-0852
EMail: TonyG@Microsoft.com
Barbara Jennings
Sandia National Laboratories
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87106
USA
Phone: (505) 845-8554
EMail: jennings@sandia.gov
Expires: 10 October 1997