Paul and/or Christian,
Although I have a project to investigate X.500, I have not yet gotten
personally involved, and could use a little remedial instruction.
Are your comments regarding the difficulty of handling unknown
OIDs based on the use of a "production" quality X.500 directory
server and/or DUA, or are you using something like QUIPU?
I seem to recall reading somewhere that the syntax of "new"
attributes was supposed to be promulgated in ASN.1 as some
sort of a library function. Is that true?
I would have hoped that any oganization that registered with ANSI
and obtained its own OID could use that to qualify the OID for a new
attribute, and that it would be possible to look up the syntax for the new
attribute in the directory itself. Is this correct?
I do understand that the semantics of new attributes may be difficult to
handle, particularly if those semantics involve other attributes.
For example, it may not be easy to know that the conventional
presentation format for a postal address could be constructed from the
following attributes:
givenName, initials, surname, generationQualifier,
houseIdentifier, streetAddress, [or postOfficeBox]
locality, stateOrProvince, postalCode
country
But certainly there must be a relatively simple way for a directory
service provider to decide to offer a new set of attributes, and to
promulgate those to the other providers, for otherwise X.500 will
be almost useless.
Bob