RFC 1778 (rfc1778) - Page 1 of 12

The String Representation of Standard Attribute Syntaxes

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