1 Scope 1.1 General
This International Standardized Profile profiles information to be stored within the Directory which is common to a variety of applications. Information which is specific to certain applications may be profiled by other International Standardized Profiles.
The Directory has been designed to support multiple applications, drawn from a wide range of possibilities. The nature of the totality of applications supported will govern which objects are stored in the Directory. Applications may be very specific, such as the provision of distribution lists for electronic mail, or generic, such as the 'interpersonal communications directory' application. The Directory provides the opportunity to exploit commonalities among applications.
To support the implementation of the Directory as defined by CCITT Rec. X.500-series / ISO/IEC 9594, this International Standardized Profile gives requirements that are applicable to implementations of Directory System Agents (DSAs). Additionally, these requirements may guide Directory users and administrative authorities in use of the Directory.
The primary objective of this International Standardized Profile is to define the minimum capabilities that DSAs have to support. It does this by specifying minimum set of structure and naming elements for a conformant DSA and other minimum schema requirements (see 5.1).
This International Standardized Profile does not limit DSAs to these minimum capabilities - a DSA that complies with this International Standardized Profile and has no additional information handling (storage, retrieval and modification) capabilities may not be adequate for many purposes, and implementors are strongly encouraged to provide such additional capabilities.
Likewise, it does not limit Naming Authorities in any way, e.g., restrict their selection of object classes or naming attributes to those which are required to be supported by this International Standardized Profile. Rather, it guarantees that selections made within the scope of this International Standardized Profile will be within the capabilities of DSAs compliant with this International Standardized Profile.
In addition, interworking between DSAs which comply with this International Standardized Profile will be greatly facilitated on this minimum basis of structure and naming rules.
Clause 6 defines the minimum set of structure and naming elements for entries representing objects commonly used by multiple applications. Other International Standardized Profiles may refer to this clause and make use of the defined minimum structure, and may extend this structure for application specific information. The minimum structure is defined within the scope of annex B of CCITT X.521 / ISO/IEC 9594-7 which is not an integral part of the specification.
Clause 7 deals with object classes which are common to multiple applications. Clauses 8 to 9 deal with attribute types and attribute syntaxes, respectively, used by entries belonging to these object classes. This is done by reference to and within the scope of CCITT Rec. X.520 / ISO/IEC 9594-6 and CCITT Rec. X.52 1 / ISO/IEC 9594-7.
The Directory Access Protocol (DAP) and the Directory System Protocol (DSP), as defined by CCITT Rec. X.500 series / ISO/IEC 9594, can be used to access information stored in a Directory Information Base (DIB) fragment which is profiled by this International Standardized Profile.
NOTE - This International Standardized Profile is a profile for the 1988 edition of the Directory Specifications and introduces some additional concepts which have subsequently been introduced into the 1993 edition of the Directory Specifications. These concepts include
- types of object classes: abstract, structural or auxiliary;
- structure elements which correspond to structure rules and name forms; and
- the Protocol Information attribute.
These concepts are no longer aligned with the 1993 edition of the Directory Specifications.
1.2 Position Within the Taxonomy
This International Standardized Profile is identified in ISO/IEC TR 10000-2 as FDI-11 - Directory data definitions - Common Directory Use (Normal).
1.3 Scenario
A Directory user (e.g., an application-process), by means of its associated Directory User Agent (DUA), obtains Directory information by accessing directly or indirectly one or more DSAs of the Directory.
