RFC 1778 (rfc1778) - Page 1 of 12
The String Representation of Standard Attribute Syntaxes
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group T. Howes
Request for Comments: 1778 University of Michigan
Obsoletes: 1488 S. Kille
Category: Standards Track ISODE Consortium
W. Yeong
Performance Systems International
C. Robbins
NeXor Ltd.
March 1995
The String Representation of Standard Attribute Syntaxes
Status of this Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Abstract
The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) [9] requires that
the contents of AttributeValue fields in protocol elements be octet
strings. This document defines the requirements that must be
satisfied by encoding rules used to render X.500 Directory attribute
syntaxes into a form suitable for use in the LDAP, then goes on to
define the encoding rules for the standard set of attribute syntaxes
defined in [1,2] and [3].
1. Attribute Syntax Encoding Requirements.
This section defines general requirements for lightweight directory
protocol attribute syntax encodings. All documents defining attribute
syntax encodings for use by the lightweight directory protocols are
expected to conform to these requirements.
The encoding rules defined for a given attribute syntax must produce
octet strings. To the greatest extent possible, encoded octet
strings should be usable in their native encoded form for display
purposes. In particular, encoding rules for attribute syntaxes
defining non-binary values should produce strings that can be
displayed with little or no translation by clients implementing the
lightweight directory protocols.
Howes, Kille, Yeong & Robbins
