CURRENT MEETING REPORT


Minutes of the Integrated Directory Services Working Group (IDS)

Reported by Linda Millington, Control Data Systems, Inc.


The previous meeting's minutes were agreed and there were no changes 
or additions to the Agenda.


1. Liaison Reports

It is preferred that liaison reports be circulated to the mailing list prior 
to the meetings so that they are accessible and so that there is a record 
of them.

AARNET, Nameflow and Long Bud reports will be circulated to the 
mailing list.  Nomenclator has already been sent to the list.

Patrik Faltstrom gave an overview of the WHOIS++ Pilot.  This 
currently consists of a number of projects around the world with 54 
servers and 280 fetches (unique domains).  The top node of the world 
allows for searches on WPS information and on URCs.  The next version 
of the Digger code will be available at the beginning of February and 
will provide language support, Unicode support, searches for CDR 
blocks and security in the form of Kerberos 4 between both servers and 
servers and clients.  A NSF project at the University of California is 
currently looking at management tools and scaleability.  The 
expectation is that this project will handle half a million entries.  
Further information can be obtained from :

http://www.bunyip.com/products/digger


2. Papers submitted

The ÒBuilding a Directory Service in the USÓ draft will be progressed 
as an informational RFC.  A new I-D with a few minor changes to the 
text about 1993 Access Control and corrections will be submitted shortly.  
After discussion and a show of hands, the Working Group decided that 
the directory paper by Peter Jurg and Erik Huizer should be progressed 
as a BCP RFC.  Harald will take up this matter with the IESG.


3. X.500 Catalogue

The authors are currently waiting for implementor descriptions.  A 
deadline of December 31, 1995 was agreed for implementor input with 
the resulting draft being out by January 15, 1996.  There was some 
discussion about what to do with the existing but out-of-date 
information in the catalogue.  It was suggested that this information 
should be omitted from the draft.


4.  WHOIS++ Catalogue

This has not been updated since Stockholm, but implementors should 
send their information to Patrik Faltstrom by December 31.  The draft 
will be available January 15, 1996.


5. CCSO Nameserver (PH) Architecture

The aim of this draft by Roland Hedberg, Steve Dorner, and Paul Pomes 
is to create a more rigourous description of Ph.  No functionality will be 
added that would break the currently running software.  A BNF 
description of the protocol is being added.  Creating new attributes 
within Ph is currently open.  Joann Ordille found over 900 attributes in 
her research, many of which were language differences and 
interpretation differences.  A minimal subset of attributes is being put 
together with stricter descriptions.  A first draft of this paper has been 
sent to the registry and the next version will be circulated within the 
next few weeks.


6. Ph Directory Server Creation and Support

By March 1, 1996, Roland Hedberg, Joann Ordille and John Noerenberg 
will submit a Draft which will give preferred practice and will include 
a preferred schema.  The Nomenclator Report has information on 
schema attribute distribution.  The report may be accessedd at the 
following Web site:

http://netlib.att.com/netlib/att/cd/home/nomen/nomencl
ator.html

Alternatively, email may be sent to joann@research.att.com

More information on Ph can be obtained from the following listserv :

info-ph-dev@listserv.cso.uiuc.edu


The final decision about whether the Ph work will be FYI or Standards 
track will be made at the Los Angeles IETF.  The current feeling is 
towards Standards track because of the perceived importance of having 
well-documented directory services in order to obtain an integrated 
directory service.

There was some discussion about using the Web as a directory service 
and the problem of unstructured data.


7. X.500 Root Naming Context

David Chadwick gave a brief overview of his paper.  He is proposing a 
phased solution to the problem of managing the Root namespace which 
initially uses DISP rather than DOP.  Nexor will implement these 
changes next year and they will be piloted by Nameflow. 

It was decided that discussion on the progress of this paper should 
continue until December 31.  It will then move to Experimental.  
Implementors would then be sought and Harald would approach SC21 
with the results.  If they still express no interest it would then be 
decided whether to move it on to the IETF Standards track.


8. Internet White Pages Service

There was a lot of debate on what exactly user requirements meant and 
the resultant agreement was that discussion would be moved to the 
mailing list.  A more focused discuss wil be created by the use of threads 
in subject lines. The chairs will send out a Table of Contents within a 
week to get agreement on a structure.  The authors would then rearrange 
their test into the new structure, then it will be reviewed section by 
section on the list.


9. Schema Requirements

Tony Genovese went through the document structure.  In addition, the 
following items are to be discussed further on the mailing list :

o  Structured fields
o  Certificate storage

Tony would like more input from the Working Group in addition to some 
examples.  Harald will provide input on character sets.


10.  Privacy Requirements

Barbara Jennings will send a paper she has written on this subject to the 
mailing list and the Group will decide if they feel this is a relevent 
topic to be pursued.


11. Quality of Directory Service

This discussion was prompted by a Nameflow paper on the quality of 
directory services.  It was decided that this information should be used 
as input to the user requirements draft.


12. Charter Revision

Document timescales and revisions will be incorporated into the 
Charter.  It was also felt that the Charter ought to make the directory 
experience of the Group more visible to the rest of the IETF in the light 
of current discussions in the DNS and PKIX areas.


13. Schema Task Force

Pressure of work has forced a number of the original group to relinquish 
their responsibilities to this area.  Because it was agreed that this was 
an important issue, Tim Howes will try and reform the Task Force with 
new people.