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Subject: RE: [security-services] A Modest Proposal about Attribute Names
(Just bouncing the rubble here, as we agreed to leave the definition as is on the call, but maybe some text below will be useful for the spec.) On Tue, 12 Feb 2002, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote: > The most obvious way to represent X.500 attributes would be to use the > OID URN: > > namespace=OID:12.3.42.3.42.1.1.1 > > There is no need for a name in this instance. OK, I was going to bring this up. Indeed all proper X.500-style attribute types are identified by OIDs. A unitary SAML AttributeDesignator (as Irving proposed) could hold use the OID URN namespace, ala <saml:Attribute saml:Name="urn:oid:2.5.4.3">RL "Bob" Morgan</saml:Attribute> which unambiguously indicates what the attribute type is (ie, "commmonName" in this case). OIDs can of course refer to many other kinds of things, including, possibly, objects that are not X.500-style attribute types but are still used as SAML attributes. Again, I think it will be common for SAML deployments to deal with many attribute spaces from distinct technologies and it would be helpful to implementations to indicate what kind of attribute-technology an attribute is, rather than, say, in the above case having to grovel through a large set of attribute-type repositories looking for an OID match. And I'm sure the DSML definition of AttributeDescriptionValue to include attribute names as well as OIDs was meant to accomodate how existing LDAP implmentations work, ie that they'll use names by default. So saying "always use OIDs" would make (a little) more work for those plugging in LDAP directories as attribute sources. > I will do some research to find out the current status of the OID URI, > if the toplevel scheme did not go through the URN scheme must have. It's defined in RFC 3061, which is an Informational RFC. So it has no standard status per se, but it doesn't have to, seems to me, if people just agree to use it. - RL "Bob"
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