Protocol Action: A String Representation of Distinguished Names to Proposed Standard

[IESG Secretary <[e-mail]>]

Recommendation

  The IESG has approved the Internet Draft "A String Representation of
  Distinguished Names" <draft-ietf-osids-distnames-05.txt, .ps> as a
  Proposed Standard.  The IESG has also approved a companion protocol,
  "Using the OSI Directory to Achieve User Friendly Naming"
  <draft-ietf-osids-friendlynaming-05.txt, .ps> as an Experimental
  Protocol.  These documents are the product of the OSI Directory
  Services Working Group. The IESG contact persons are Erik Huizer and
  Russ Hobby.

Technical Summary

  The OSI Directory uses distinguished names as the primary keys to
  entries in the directory.  Distinguished Names are encoded in ASN.1.
  When a distinguished name is communicated between to users not using
  a directory protocol (e.g., in a mail message), there is a need to
  have a user-oriented string representation of distinguished name.
  This specification defines a string format for representing names,
  which is designed to give a clean representation of commonly used
  names, whilst being able to represent any distinguished name.

  The User Friendly Naming proposal sets out some conventions for
  representing names in a friendly manner, and shows how this can be
  used to achieve really friendly naming.  This then leads to a
  specification of a standard format for representing names, and to
  procedures to resolve them.  This leads to a specification which
  allows directory names to be communicated between humans.  The format
  in this specification is identical to that defined in the String
  Representation of Distinguished Name document and it is intended that
  these specifications are compatible.

Working Group Summary

  These documents were submitted as a single Proposed Standard in
  September 1991.  In consultation with the Working Group chair, it was
  agreed that the User Friendly Naming Algorithms were too little
  understood for standardization and were split from the String
  Representation of Distinguished Name. These two documents are the
  result of that re-organization.

Protocol Quaility

  These protocols have been reviewed and initial support for User
  friendly Naming and the String Representation of Distinguished Names
  has been implemented in Directory User Agents from University of
  Michigan and from University College London.

Greg Vaudreuil
IESG Secretary