Re: A philosophical question about large directory structures

Tim,

If you do not somehow guess the upper levels of a DIT, you would always
have initiate large searches before finding the subtree you are looking for.

Right now you can pretty much assume that most commercial entities will be
under the .com domain, but what happens when we have many other TLDs?  Is
every single client going to maintain a list of all the second level
domains?  Even if they did (which would require a client with lots of
memory), I would still find host names that may not look like a company
name at all.

Some companies are lucky enough to have "good" domain names (such as
Netscape), but many will not.  I would rather see the Directory as an aid
to finding the hostname than using an artificial and at times misleading name.

We are talking about a Directory infrastructure that should be able to
scale significantly.  I shudder just thinking of the large number searches
that would be required if the .com domain were divided up among thousands
of DSAs.  Who would maintain the knowledge references?

I would argue that the .com name space is simply too flat.

Cheers,               ....Erik.

---------------------------------
Erik Skovgaard
GeoTrain Corp.
Enterprise Directory Planning Services
http://www.geotrain.com

At 15:58 99/06/23 -0700, Tim Howes wrote:
>Just an opinion, but I don't think anybody wants to
>guess at distinguished names. I actually think it's
>likely to be significantly less effective than trying
>to guess domain names, which people seem to be guessing
>or otherwise figuring out today without too much
>trouble. And I don't think any respectable user agents
>will support guessing except possibly as some last
>resort mode of operation. We've seen directory clients
>moving more and more toward hiding DNs from users, and
>I think that's a very good thing and one we're likely
>to see increasingly.                 -- Tim
>
>Erik Skovgaard wrote:
>> 
>> Thomas,
>> 
>> I agree that namespaces have to be unique, but I *also* believe they should
>> make sense to users.  Granted, *some* host names are user-friendly, but
>> many are not.
>> 
>> In the specific example you mention, I would suggest that {o=Sun
>> Microsystems, c=ch} is a reasonable and guessable namespace.  I would not
>> venture to guess what your hostname is.
>> 
>> Cheers,                  ....Erik.
>> 
>> -----------------------------------
>> Erik Skovgaard
>> GeoTrain Corp.
>> Enterprise Directory Engineering
>> http://www.geotrain.com
>> 
>> At 23:41 99/06/23 +0200, Thomas Lenggenhager wrote:
>> >On Wednesday, 23 Jun 1999, Erik Skovgaard writes:
>> >> The DC namespace is poorly suited for the Directory since the
Internet host
>> >> names are not all guessable.  For instance, if I were to look up
Canadian
>> >> Airlines, I would have to *know* that the hostname is 'cdnair.com'.
>> >
>> >We are going a bit off track with these messages about namespace.
>> >
>> >The namespace should mainly be unique. That would be provided by DC.
>> >Finding something should not be tried to achieve by guessing the right
>> >name, but by searching for it (index/directory).
>> >
>> >> Since the Directory name registration is closely tied to the legal
names of
>> >> companies in most countries, I think that makes for a much better
choice.
>> >> I would rather find Canadian Airlines as {o=Canadian Airlines, c=ca}
than
>> >> the somewhat cryptic {dc=cdnair, dc=com}.
>> >
>> >And how about the official name of Canadian Airlines in French and the
>> >DN you proposed?
>> >
>> >What is the official name of a company?
>> >       Acme    or Acme Inc.    or Acme, Inc.
>> >
>> >Just as an example of quite ugly and non-guessable names, the official
>> >name of Sun in Switzerland:
>> >       Sun Microsystems (Schweiz) AG
>> >
>> >Thomas
>> >
>> >
>
>-- 
>Tim Howes
>Vice President, Technology
>Office of the CTO
>America Online, Inc.
>
>