Revision of OSI-DS 20

[Chris Weider <[e-mail]>]

OSI-DS Working Group					Chris Weider
Internet-Draft						ANS
							Mark Knopper
							Merit Network
							March 1992

	X.500 Schema for a pilot Educator's Directory Service

Status of this memo

As educators place more emphasis on computers, computer techniques, and 
computer networks, and as educational resource providers are making more
services available over computer networks, the Internet is being seen as
as a valuable tool for students and educators. To enhance and support the
resources available on the Internet to educators, Merit and Educom would like
to implement a directory of educators and resources using the X.500 protocol.

This draft document will be submitted to the RFC editor as a protocol
specification. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Please send comments
to the authors or to the discussion group [e-mail].


Internet Draft		Schema for an Educator Directory 	March 1992

1: Introduction.

Educators and students alike are increasingly using the Internet to 
communicate with each other and to tap in to online resources, expanding
their range of educational possibilities and becoming computer literate.
A directory of educators with Internet access and a directory of resources
available on the Internet would therefore enhance the usefulness of the
Internet to educators.

2: Information to be incorporated into the Directory

2.1 Structure of this paper

There are 10 new attributes and 4 new object classes in this paper. This section
discusses the new attributes; the new object classes are detailed in section
3. 

2.2 Motivation for the new schema

Educom has been informally keeping a paper directory of educators, areas of 
interest, and resources for some time now, and they have provided the 
motivation and definitions for the attributes in this paper.

2.3 New Attributes

New attributes proposed for these schema include:
  
	areaOfInterest ATTRIBUTE
		WITH ATTRIBUTE SYNTAX
		CaseIgnoreStringSyntax
		which contains one of a set of keywords (Math, Spanish, etc.)
		which can be used to locate people with a specific interest
		rapidly.

	gradeLevel ATTRIBUTE
		WITH ATTRIBUTE SYNTAX
		CaseIgnoreStringSyntax
		which contains a grade listing, e.g. 7th grade.

	schoolWorkedFor ATTRIBUTE
		WITH ATTRIBUTE SYNTAX
		CaseIgnoreStringSyntax
		which contains the name of the school worked for.
		Ideally, this would either a) be a RDN syntax, or b)
		not be needed at all, depending on the coverage, but
		as the addition of thousands of elementary and secondary
		schools in the U.S. alone to the Directory would be a 
		Hurculean task, this attribute seems like the best option.

	department ATTRIBUTE
		WITH ATTRIBUTE SYNTAX
		CaseIgnoreStringSyntax
		which contains the name of the department (English, etc)
		for which the teacher works. As above, if every school were
		represented in the Directory, this would not be necessary.

	numberOfEntries ATTRIBUTE
		WITH ATTRIBUTE SYNTAX
		CaseIgnoreStringSyntax
		which contains the number of entries in a mailing list.


Internet Draft          Schema for an Educator Directory        March 1992


	howToGetList ATTRIBUTE
		WITH ATTRIBUTE SYNTAX
		CaseIgnoreListSyntax
		which describes how to obtain the mailing list.

	onlineAvailability ATTRIBUTE
		WITH ATTRIBUTE SYNTAX
		CaseIgnoreStringSyntax
		which states whether the list is available on-line or not
		(values 'yes' or 'no').

	numberOfMembers ATTRIBUTE
		WITH ATTRIBUTE SYNTAX
		CaseIgnoreStringSyntax
		which states how many members a given newsgroup has.
		

	associatedMailingList ATTRIBUTE
		WITH ATTRIBUTE SYNTAX
		CaseIgnoreStringSyntax
		which contains the e-mail address of the associated mailing
		list.

	geographicalRegionServed ATTRIBUTE
		WITH ATTRIBUTE SYNTAX
		CaseIgnoreStringSyntax
		which states the geographical region served by a given 
		educational network.

3: Object Model and object classes

3.1 Object Model

Our object model for the new object classes is:

  top---*educationalAuxiliaryObject*
      |
      |-*informationResource*---*listResource*
      |			      |
      |			      |-*newsGroup*
      |                       |
      |-*network*---*educationalNetwork*

where the object classes with *s around them are new. The informationResource
object class is defined in [1], whereas the network object class is defined
in [2]. Note that in our object class definitions in 3.2, educationalAuxil-
iaryObject is a object class where we have been able to split off a group of
attributes, which we can then 'and' with other object classes to make new
classes.

3.2 New object classes

There are 4 new object classes defined in this paper:

educationalAuxiliaryObject OBJECT-CLASS
	SUBCLASS OF top
	MUST CONTAIN { }
	MAY CONTAIN {areaOfInterest, gradeLevel, schoolWorkedFor, department}

Internet Draft          Schema for an Educator Directory        March 1992

listResource OBJECT-CLASS
	SUBCLASS OF informationResource
	MUST CONTAIN {}
	MAY CONTAIN { numberOfEntries, howToGetList, onlineAvailability }

newsGroup OBJECT-CLASS
	SUBCLASS OF informationResource
	MUST CONTAIN { }
	MAY CONTAIN {numberOfMembers, associatedMailingList }

educationalNetwork OBJECT-CLASS
	SUBCLASS OF network
	SUBCLASS OF informationResource
	MUST CONTAIN { }
	MAY CONTAIN {geographicalRegion}

4: DIT structure

Although there exists a subtree of the DIT named 'o=Internet, ou=K-12 Directory'
the object classes used for people there are defined in an older version of
this paper. We would keep this part of the DIT and put in entries for each
educator that had object class entries oc=person & educationalAuxiliaryObject.
Particular educational resource providers and resources would 'and' the 
educationalAuxiliaryObject with serviceProvider and informationResource 
respectively.  Educational Networks (FIDONet, etc) would sit under this portion
of the tree also until the Directory is fleshed out enough to allow us to 
put these in some network directory. The second and third object classes above
perhaps should belong in [1], but they came out of the work on the previous
draft of this paper, so here they are.

5: Security Considerations

Security is not discussed in this paper.

6: References

[1] Weider, C., Schema for Information Resource Description in
X.500, Internet Draft, March 1992

[2] Knopper, M. Interim Schema for Network Infrastructure
Information, In progress.

7: Who We Are

Chris Weider, [e-mail]
2901 Hubbard, Pod G
Ann Arbor, MI 48105
[phone]

Mark Knopper, [e-mail]
1071 Beal Ave.
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
[phone]