Access and Synchronization of the Internet Directory BOF (ASID)

Reported by Tim Howes/University of Michigan


Background for this BOF

Tim presented a review of the Framework for a White Pages Service for
the Internet BOF (PAGES) held on Monday, along with the perceived need
for an ASID Working Group in the broader context of the WPS directory
service reorganization underway in the IETF. The PAGES BOF identified
the need for four groups:


   o A short-lived requirements group (Tony Genovese)
   o A policy/administration/legal issues group (IDS)
   o An interoperability/indexing group (TBD)
   o A protocol group (ASID)


ASID is the proposed protocol group, whose mission is to define and
evolve individual directory service protocols.


Review of Proposed Charter

There was some discussion about whether the synchronization part of ASID
was appropriate.  Some people felt it was not a well-defined area and
that none of the group's milestones currently reflected a focus on this
topic.  Others felt that synchronization was an important aspect of
Internet directory services which needed to be addressed by the IETF,
and that ASID was the place to do it.  It was finally decided that ASID
would keep synchronization in its charter.

Tim took an action to make any minor charter changes required and send
it to the list.


Proposed Group Name

There were several suggestions for alternate names for the group:


PIDS          Protocols for Internet Directory Service
CWPIDS        (Unknown)
DASI          Directory Access and Synchronization for the Internet


The final decision will be made on the mailing list.


Logistics - How Will this Group Work?

Given the broad set of protocols under the ASID umbrella, there was some
question as to how the group could best function in its ``coordinating
and reviewing'' capacity, while remaining focused enough on individual
protocols to get actual work done.

It was decided that individual protocols (e.g., WHOIS++, LDAP) should be
developed by smaller teams working on their own mailing lists (which in
many cases already exist).  These groups would then bring their
documents to the ASID list for review.



SOLO Directory Service

Paul-Andre Pays gave a presentation on the SOLO directory service
(currently described in the Internet-Draft draft-huitema-solo-01.txt).
A lively discussion followed.  Paul-Andre stated that a future version
of the document would flesh out various issues such as schema, query
syntax, etc.



LDAP

Simon Spero presented some comments on the LDAP Proposed Standard.  The
comments were editorial things he had encountered in doing a second
independent implementation of LDAP. Tim will make the suggested changes
and resubmit the draft.

LDAP has been at Proposed Standard since July of 1993.  Since there are
now two independent interoperable implementations, the feeling of the
group was that it was time to move LDAP to Draft Standard.  Erik Huizer
was tasked with pursuing this.



CLDAP

The Connectionless LDAP draft by Alan Young seems to have taken on a
life of its own, generating much discussion on the OSIDS list and in the
meeting.  There was a generally identified need for a connectionless
version of LDAP, but among the issues still needing to be resolved were:


   o How do we fit multiple results in a single packet
   o How do we fit multiple requests in a single packet
   o Should we leave out modifies
   o How small does it need to be (e.g., to fit certificates)


The group felt modifies were not needed.  People can use LDAP if they
want to do modifies/creates/deletes.

The last question about size of the packets produced much discussion and
lots of space-saving ideas, including using ``packed encoding rules,''
replacing attribute names by well-known numbers, and using some form of
compression.

It was finally decided that we did not have a good handle on the
requirements for such a protocol in terms of size.  Simon was
volunteered to write up his views on size requirements and send them to
the list.


Date of Next Meeting

The next meeting of ASID (its first as a real working group) will be at
the July IETF in Toronto, Canada.


Attendees

Alexis Bor               bora@ct.si.cs.boeing.com
Luc Boulianne            lucb@bunyip.com
Gregg Brekke             gbrekke@mr.net
Susan Calcari            susanc@internic.net
C. Allan Cargille        allan.cargille@cs.wisc.edu
Michael Carroll          br.mjc@rlg.stanford.edu
Rong Chang               rong@watson.ibm.com
Cyrus Chow               cchow@ames.arc.nasa.gov
Charles Combs            0003647213@mcimail.com
Robert Cooney            cooney@wnyose.nctsw.navy.mil
Curtis Cox               ccox@wnyosi7.nctsw.navy.mil
Urs Eppenberger          eppenberger@switch.ch
Susan Estrada            sestrada@aldea.com
Richard Everman          reverman@ka.reg.uci.edu
Roger Fajman             raf@cu.nih.gov
Patrik Faltstrom         paf@nada.kth.se
Jill Foster              Jill.Foster@newcastle.ac.uk
Lois Frampton            frampton@mitre.org
Tony Genovese            genovese@es.net
Arlene Getchell          getchell@es.net
Judith Grass             grass@cnri.reston.va.us
Alisa Hata               hata@cac.washington.edu
Roland Hedberg           Roland.Hedberg@umdac.umu.se
Alex Hopmann             alex.hopmann@resnova.com
Tim Howes                tim@umich.edu
Richard Huber            rvh@ds.internic.net
Erik Huizer              Erik.Huizer@SURFnet.nl
Barbara Jennings         bjjenni@sandia.gov
Marko Kaittola           Marko.Kaittola@dante.org.uk
David Katinsky           dmk@pilot.njin.net
Robert Kummerfeld        bob@cs.su.oz.au
Sylvain Langlois         Sylvain.Langlois@der.edf.fr
Walter Lazear            lazear@gateway.mitre.org
Glenn Mansfield          glenn@aic.co.jp
April Marine             april@atlas.arc.nasa.gov
Marilyn Martin           martin@netcom.ubc.ca
Larry Masinter           masinter@parc.xerox.com
David Miller             dlm@cac.washington.edu
Linda Millington         l.millington@noc.ulcc.ac.uk
Mitra                    mitra@pandora.sf.ca.us
Keith Moore              moore@cs.utk.edu
Kim Morla                kmorla@pucp.edu.pe
John Myers               jgm+@cmu.edu
Mark Needleman           mhn@stubbs.ucop.edu
Chris Newman             chrisn+@cmu.edu
Martin Pagel             martinp@microsoft.com
Paul-Andre Pays          pays@faugeres.inria.fr
Karen Petraska-Veum      karen.veum@gsfc.nasa.gov
Mark Prior               mrp@itd.adelaide.edu.au
Deb Rodgers              deb@cac.washington.edu
Steven Russert           srussert@atc.boeing.com
Srinivas Sataluri        sri@internic.net
Rickard Schoultz         schoultz@sunet.se
Michael Seibel           mikes@cac.washington.edu
Mark Smith               mcs@umich.edu
Milan Sova               sova@feld.cvut.cz
David Staudt             dstaudt@nsf.gov
Einar Stefferud          stef@nma.com
Peter Sylvester          peter.sylvester@inria.fr
Aleks Totic              atotic@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Chris Weider             clw@bunyip.com
Russ Wright              wright@lbl.gov