CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_

Reported by Linda Millington/Control Data Systems

Minutes of the Integrated Directory Services Working Group (IDS)

The IDS Working Group met once at the Stockholm IETF on Wednesday,
19 July.  There were no changes or additions to the agenda.


Liaison Reports/Pilot Projects

In order to free up some time in the meetings, liaison reports and pilot
project reports will be circulated on the mailing list.  The following
reports were circulated:  AARNet, Nomenclator, and Long Bud.


Nameflow/Paradise Report

Vincent Berkhout gave an overview of the current status of the
Nameflow/Paradise service.  He reported a steady growth of about 40% in
the number of entries in the DIT. The current installed base is mainly
unsupported Quipu which needs to be upgraded to 1993 and the issues of
where to go next are currently being studied.  The main aim is for the
service to grow and, with this goal in mind, service level agreements
will be put in place where possible.  The service will be opened up for
commercial companies to participate and it will be made easier for small
organisations to participate.  Another important aspect of the future of
the service will be an improvement in quality.  Availability of first
level DSAs is improving and there are currently over 700 DSAs throughout
the world participating with over 4,500 organisations which are mainly
based in Europe.  An analysis of DE logins has shown that more than two
thirds of the directory enquiries on the central server are from the US.


     http://www.dante.net/nameflow.html ``growth''


On-line Directory Catalogues

Patrik has put the WHOIS++ catalogue up on the Web and this has been
operational for three weeks now.  The catalogue contains one server so
far.  The WHOIS++ pilot currently consists of over 40 servers worldwide
with over 40,000 white pages entries and 5,000 URCs.  One server is
being registered per day.  The Digger home page contains information on
what is happening in the WHOIS++ area.  More statistics will be
available for the Dallas meeting and WHOIS++ will be added to the pilot
projects list.

Patrik will provide the URL to add a product to the list.

Chris Apple is currently putting the X.500 catalogue on-line.  He
currently has ten additional implementations to add and is starting to
look at X.500 1993 implementations.


     http://ds.internic.net/ds/projects.html



Schema Registry

The discussion began by ascertaining that there was a need for
maintaining an X.500 schema for the Internet.  Once this was decided,
the problem of the decision making process was tackled.  Talk centred
around the issues of getting it right and getting used.  The conclusion
was that there should be a two step process of putting items in to the
registry, then if there are no RFCs within a certain timescale, drop
them.  The importance of a common schema across directory services was
acknowledged but it was felt that the focus should be kept on solving
the problems of the X.500 registry before becoming too ambitious.  Sri
and Linda will do the fine-tuning and language changes on the schema
registry document then send it to the Area Directors again.

Volunteers were sought to publish a successor to RFC 1274 and Roland
Hedberg offered to help Sri with the document.



X.500 Root Context

David Chadwick circulated a paper on the X.500 Root context to the list.
In his absence, Vincent Berkhout gave the background of the paper.  The
ultimate aim is to replace the root DSA and move to a 1993 service which
necessitates the functionality to connect first level DSAs.  The
discussion centred around the activities needed to run an X.500 1993
pilot/service and it was felt that a number of documents would be
required.  In the light of this the Area Director saw the need for a new
working group to tackle this area.  At this point the importance of a
rolling directory group which spins off working groups when necessary
was emphasised.  The Area Directors will look at this and get back to
the group.



Building a Directory Service In The US

The conclusion of the group was that this document was extremely
beneficial and should be published as soon as possible.  Any comments or
discussion points should be sent to the mailing list with the aim of
publishing an Internet-Draft at the beginning of August which will then
be progressed to an Informational RFC. It was also suggested that the
SURFNet booklet be published as a BCP RFC.



Simple Internet White Pages Document Review

The white pages documents have been brought into this group for review
and progression.  The WHIP document had become very complicated and a
lengthy discussion ensued on how to progress with it.  A number of items
surfaced as being essential to a future white pages service, it needs to
be kept simple and achievable and a common schema is extremely
important.  The decision was to use the WHIP document as a basis and
break it into user requirements and schema requirements.


   o User Requirements

     April Marine will take the lead for pushing this Internet-Draft
     forward and her co-authors will be Allan Cargille, Tony Genovese
     and a representative from SURFNet, Peter Jurg.  The working group
     needs to participate in this activity and the aim is to have an
     Internet-Draft by the end of August.

   o Schema Requirements

     Tony Genovese will produce a draft by the end of August.


Charter Review

The charter will be circulated and reviewed in detail on the list.  
The X.500 Catalogue date should be December 1995.  The Area Director
suggested that pilots should have goals and end dates.  The WHOIS++
Pilot and X.500 1993 Pilots will be added to the pilot reporting
procedure.