draft-joslin-config-schema-xx.txt

Application Working Group                                      M. Ansari
INTERNET-DRAFT                                    Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Expires Febuary 2003                                           L. Howard
                                                 PADL Software Pty. Ltd.
                                                         B. Joslin [ed.]
                                                 Hewlett-Packard Company

                                                    September 15th, 2003
Intended Category: Informational


                 A Configuration Schema for LDAP Based
                         Directory User Agents
                  <draft-joslin-config-schema-07.txt>


Status of this Memo

     This memo provides information for the Internet community.  This
     memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribu-
     tion of this memo is unlimited.

     This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
     all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.

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Abstract

     This document describes a mechanism for global configuration of
     similar directory user agents.  This document defines a schema for



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     configuration of these DUAs that may be discovered using the Light-
     weight Directory Access Protocol in RFC 2251[17].  A set of attri-
     bute types and an objectclass are proposed, along with specific
     guidelines for interpreting them.  A significant feature of the
     global configuration policy for DUAs is a mechanism that allows
     DUAs to re-configure their schema to that of the end user's
     environment.  This configuration is achieved through attribute and
     objectclass mapping.  This document is intended to be a skeleton
     for future documents that describe configuration of specific DUA
     services.


1.  Background & Motivation

     The LDAP protocol has brought about a new and nearly ubiquitous
     acceptance of the directory server.  Many new client applications
     (DUAs) are being created that use LDAP directories for many dif-
     ferent services.  And although the LDAP protocol has eased the
     development of these applications, some challenges still exist for
     both developers and directory administrators.

     The authors of this document are implementers of DUAs described by
     RFC 2307 [14].  In developing these agents, we felt there are
     several issues that still need to be addressed to ease the deploy-
     ment and configuration of a large network of these DUAs.

     One of these challenges stems from the lack of a utopian schema.  A
     utopian schema would be one that every application developer could
     agree upon and that would support every application.  Unfortunately
     today, many DUAs define their own schema (like RFC 2307 vs.
     Microsoft's Services for Unix [13]) containing similar attributes,
     but with different attribute names.  This can lead to data redun-
     dancy within directory entries and give directory administrators
     unwanted challenges, updating schemas and synchronizing data.

     So, one goal of this document is to eliminate data redundancy by
     having DUAs configure themselves to the schema of the deployed
     directory, instead of forcing it's own schema on the directory.

     Another goal of this document is to provide the DUA with enough
     configuration information so that it can discover how to retrieve
     its data in the directory, such as what locations to search in the
     directory tree.

     Finally, this document intends to describe a configuration method
     for DUAs that can be shared among many DUAs, on various platforms,
     providing as such, a configuration profile, the purpose is to cen-
     tralize and simplify management of DUAs.



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     This document is intended to provide the skeleton framework for
     future drafts, which will describe the individual implementation
     details for the particular services provided by that DUA.  The
     authors of this document plan to develop such a document for the
     Network Information Service DUA, described by RFC 2307 or its suc-
     cessor.

     We expect that as DUAs take advantage of this configuration scheme,
     each DUA will require additional configuration parameters, not
     specified by this document.  Thus, we would expect that new auxili-
     ary object classes, containing new configuration attributes will be
     created, and then joined with the structural class defined by this
     document to create a configuration profile for a particular DUA
     service.  And that by joining various auxiliary objectclasses for
     different DUA services, that configuration of various DUA services
     can be controlled by a single configuration profile entry.


2.  General Issues

     The schema defined by this document is defined under the "DUA Con-
     figuration Schema."  This schema is derived from the OID: iso (1)
     org (3) dod (6) internet (1) private (4) enterprises (1) Hewlett-
     Packard Company (11) directory (1) LDAP-UX Integration Project (3)
     DUA Configuration Schema (1).  This OID is represented in this
     document by the keystring "DUAConfSchemaOID"
     (1.3.6.1.4.1.11.1.3.1).

2.1 Terminology

     The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
     "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED",  "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in
     this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [15].

2.2 Attributes

     The attributes and classes defined in this document are summarized
     below.

     The following attributes are defined in this document:

          preferredServerList
          defaultServerList
          defaultSearchBase
          defaultSearchScope
          authenticationMethod
          credentialLevel
          serviceSearchDescriptor



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          serviceCredentialLevel
          serviceAuthenticationMethod
          attributeMap
          objectclassMap
          searchTimeLimit
          bindTimeLimit
          followReferrals
          dereferenceAliases
          profileTTL

2.3 Object Classes

     The following object class is defined in this document:

          DUAConfigProfile

2.4 Syntax Definitions

     The following syntax definitions are used throughout this document.
     This document does not define new syntaxes that must be supported
     by the directory server.  The string encoding used by the attri-
     butes defined in this document can be found section 5.

          keystring                 as defined by RFC 2252 [2]
          descr                     as defined by RFC 2252 section 4.1
          a                         as defined by RFC 2252 section 4.1
          d                         as defined by RFC 2252 section 4.1
          space                     as defined by RFC 2252 section 4.1
          whsp                      as defined by RFC 2252 section 4.1