RE: DAML, DirXML, DSML 2.0 - let the fun begin

["Curtin, William" <curtinw@ftm.disa.mil>]

I'm doing a comparison of the three XML definitions and hope to have
something to present in the next couple of days. As you have pointed out the
three submissions solve different problems:

DAML redefines the LDAP PDUs and is more suitable for LDAP implementations
that want to use XML directly as an access protocol;

DirXML which is primarily defined to develop drivers to act as a
meta-directory between NDS and other external applications;

and iXDGW which is defined to support a gateway function using java
servlets.

As you might expect each definition contains elements and attributes that
are specific for its environment / implementation which sometimes makes the
comparison against apples and oranges.

I think that the WG needs to define the scope of the standard (will it be
used for direct access, as a meta, as a gateway, as something that can map
to the LDAP API, etc.).

						bill

-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Weltman [mailto:robw@coscend.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2001 12:13 AM
To: dsml@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: DAML, DirXML, DSML 2.0 - let the fun begin


  After a hiatus of a few months, it's time to restart the discussions on
the goals and direction of DSML 2.0. When we last met (virtually speaking),
Andy Harjanto of Microsoft had put together a strawman proposal for what
DSML 2.0 could look like. 
  See:

   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dsml/200010/msg00004.html

and the discussion that followed (Samples...) in:

   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dsml/200011/maillist.html

  The two main focus points of the discussions were:

- Can LDAP's aggregation of object classes in an entry be represented in XML
in a way that is compatible with XML Schema, with higher-level object
rendering than DSML 1.0 (which was pretty much a transliteration of LDIF
into XML)?

- Should LDAP operations (add, modify, delete, moddn, search) be represented
as XML elements, or is it possible/desirable to express them as XPath/DOM
operations on a directory as a virtual XML document?

  Andy's proposal didn't solve the first problem, and adopted the "operation
as XML element" approach to the second one. Examples:

<MyCompany  rdn="OU=MyCompany"  dn="..." description="..." class="...">
    <SalesAndMarketing rdn="OU=SalesAndMarketing"  homePage="..."
class="...">
         <Consulting  rdn="CN=Consulting" >
         </Consulting>
   </SalesAndMarketing>
   <ResearchAndDevelopment rdn="OU=ResearchAndDevelopment"
description="...">
       <ProductX rdn="CN=ProductX"  startDate="01/02/1998">
       </ProductX>
       <ProductY rdn="CN=ProductX"  startDate="04/02/1999">
       </ProductY>
   </ResearchAndDevelopment>
</MyCompany>

  <update path="guid:a7fc61cc4661924e98f5316ff060baeb" >
     <sn>Gibbs</sn>
     <telephoneNumber op="delete">(425)777 7777</telephoneNumber>
     <telephoneNumber op="append">(206)999 9999</telephoneNumber>
     <telephoneNumber op="append">(425)888 8888</telephoneNumber>
  </update>
  <update path="dn:CN=JSmith, OU=Marketing, O=Example, C=US" >
     <sn>Gibbs</sn>
     <telephoneNumber op="delete">(523)777 7777</telephoneNumber>
  </update>

-----------------------------------------------------------------

  Fast forward to March 2001 and we have three new contributions:

DAML    http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dsml/200103/msg00003.html
DirXML  http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dsml/200103/msg00004.html
XMLDAP  http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dsml/200103/msg00001.html

  Here is my brief summary:

  DAML is an XML wire-level alternative to ASN.1 for LDAP. It's an
interesting idea, and it could have saved many of us a lot of difficult
debugging if it had been the wire protocol of choice for LDAP. But I'm not
sure where it fits in with application-level access to directory data.

  DirXML is a more extensive language along the lines of DSML 1.0 (but
different) for representing directory entries and adopting the "operation as
XML element" approach for representing directory operations. The submitted
documents are HMTL versions of DTDs. It would be nice to have an overview,
or a complete sample document conforming to the DTDs, but I think I see
representations for all the LDAP operations referenced in DTD-TREE.html. I
don't see how you can express a search other than exact match on an
attribute value (e.g. no substring match), though. DirXML looks (from the
submitted DTDs) like a schema for synchronization between an NDS directory
and an application.

  XMLDAP is an XML gateway to LDAP - not in itself an XML language for
accessing directories. However it includes an XML tag library for acessing
LDAP directories using another "operation as XML element" approach. XTL (XML
Template Language, the language that includes LDAP access tags) is used to
inject directory data into an XML document as part of page preparation
(HTML, WML, other XML). XTL doesn't include an XML representation of
directory entries.

  Hopefully that was enough fuel to reignite the discussions on this mailing
list and get us moving towards (first milestone) a requirements document.

Rob

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