CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_
Reported by Linda Millington/Control Data Systems
Minutes of the Integrated Directory Services Working Group (IDS)
Minutes of the last meeting were approved and there were no additions to
the agenda.
X.500 Schema Task Force
The X.500 Schema Task Force is comprised of Ken Rossen, Russ Wright, Tim
Howes and Sri Sataluri. They have made the schema repository available
on ds.internic.net. The Schema Task Force has taken up all the schema
pieces and this document, draft-howes-x500-schema-02.txt, has been
approved for publication as an Informational RFC and is currently in the
RFC Editor's publication queue.
The Task Force now needs input on how to clean up the schema and are
ready to handle extensions to be made publicly available. It was
requested that someone should test the tables made available for a Quipu
release and any feedback should be sent to the Task Force at
x500-schema@internic.net.
X.500 Production Directory Service
This Internet-Draft was discussed on the OSI-DS mailing list to define
service levels focussed to bring the current c=US pilot up to speed. It
was decided to progress this document as an Informational RFC. There
were no comments from the group and the Internet-Draft will be sent to
the mailing list for any further comments prior to progression.
Informational Privacy Model
Background of the work to date was given and it was reiterated that this
work should be common to directory services in general and not just
X.500. It was suggested that there was a need for guidelines for
information privacy to at least make directory administrators aware of
the issues. There was a lot of discussion as to the scope and intended
audience of this document and whether it would provide a useful service
in the light of the laws differing between countries and many
organisations having their own policies. Tony Genovese suggested that
if the WHIP document was complied with, one would automatically have a
minimum set of information. The intended audience was identified as
being service providers and administrators with the purpose being to
make them aware of the issues involved in information privacy. There is
a need to define the purpose of the directory and the problems of
replication across boundaries was discussed. Due to time constraints,
it was decided to continue the discussion on the mailing list.
Erik Huizer asked for people to contribute information on their
countries information privacy laws for inclusion in the paper written by
himself and Catherine Treca.
Erik also announced that a new version of the SURFnet ``Building a
Directory Service'' booklet will be available in January/February. The
technical chapter is being extended to be non-X.500 specific, covering
areas such as WHOIS++ and SOLO. Erik will send a copy of the chapter to
the mailing list and would like people with WHOIS++ experience to
contribute. The booklet will also be made available on the Web.
Liaison Reports
o DANTE - Marko Kaittola
Marko gave an overview of what DANTE is and what DANTE does. The
PARADISE Project finished at the end of April and the
PARADISE/Nameflow project is now funded by DANTE shareholders.
DANTE outsources services and the University of London Computer
Centre is currently running the core X.500 services. DANTE is
currently working on phasing out the root DSA and an X.500 (93)
transition. The first phase of this transition will involve making
it non-quipu specific. It is intended to phase out the root DSA by
the end of April 1995. DANTE has an open mailing list for
discussion of these issues: punters@nameflow.dante.net. Requests
to be added to the list should be sent to:
punters-request@nameflow.dante.net.
o PSI - Wengyik Yeong
The c=US master DSA is now using the IC release software and has
been moved to a SPARC10 with 64MB of memory. There has been a
marked increase in availability of this service.
o NADF - Tim Howes
The NADF continues to meet and work is being done to merge
information with the Internet pilot.
o Long Bud - Kevin Jordan
The MHS-DS working group has progressed four documents for using
X.500 for mail routing as experimental RFCs and is now declaring
victory and closing down. There is also an informational RFC on
the pilot project called Long Bud which is concerned with deploying
the technology to prove the concepts. The Long Bud piloting
activity is now being stepped up and will be reported via IDS.
o WHOIS++ - Chris Weider
The WHOIS++ standards documents are now finished and experience has
been gained. The first public domain server will be available from
Bunyip in January and there should be three independent
implementations interworking by February. There will be a testbed
for the common index for directory services in the next month and
there will be a BOF on this at the next IETF.
o AARNET - Mark Prior
The last PARADISE Report has been circulated to Australian
vice-chancellors in an attempt to stimulate some interest.
Presentations
Viewgraphs of these presentations are available on the InterNIC DS
machines. The URLs are:
<http://ds.internic.net/pub/current-ietf-docs/usv/ids>
<ftp://ds.internic.net/pub/current-ietf-docs/usv/ids>
o Harvest - Michael Schwartz
A presentation was given on Harvest, an integrated set of tools to
gather, extract, organize, search, cache and replicate relevant
information across the Internet. Harvest can be tailored to digest
information in many different formats and can offer custom search
services on the Internet. Information on Harvest can be found on
http://harvest.cs.colorado.edu/.
o Nomenclator - Joann Ordille
Nomenclator: Descriptive Directory Services for Large
Heterogeneous Networks. The goals of Nomenclator are to provide a
fast, descriptive directory service for large internets dealing
with scale by constraining the search space, meta-data and data
caching. It provides one relational interface to a variety of
different data sources and provides advice and feedback on
unavailability. Nomenclator will be made available as a service
through the InterNIC and further information can be obtained via
FTP from: grilled.cs.wisc.edu.
Volunteers are needed to provide a CCSO site for the pilot as well
as volunteers to be a user site. Anyone interested should send
e-mail to nomenclator@research.att.com.
X.500 Catalog in HTML and maintenance
Chris Apple, Todd Bernard and Ken Rossen volunteered to lead this
initiative.
WHOIS++ Catalog
Chris Weider has volunteered to do this.
X.500 Projects Catalog
The two people working on this have recently changed jobs so there has
been little progress. It will be chased up and re-initialised.
Action Items Identified
o Give feedback to the Schema Task Force on the use of their tables
with Quipu.
o Send the X.500 Production Directory Service Internet-Draft to the
list.
o Send contributions for Erik's Privacy paper.
o Information Privacy Model: Tim Howes will post what the University
of Michigan has done to the list Arlene Getchell will circulate
ESNet White Paper. Relevant postings from comp.admin.policy will
be sent to the list.
o Erik will send the technical chapter of ``Building a Directory
Service'' to the list for comment.
o WHOIS++ experience is solicited for this booklet.
o Volunteers are needed for Nomenclator pilot.