DANTE's international network service, EuropaNET, links the national research networks the length and breadth of Europe and provides intercontinental connectivity.
DANTE is offering NameFLOW, an international co-ordinated X.500 directory service, based on PARADISE, the international pilot Directory service set up as part of the COSINE Project.
Connectivity - or the question „How can public Administrations be connected to the global Directory" - is a major point for EuroView, with two aspects:
• connectivity of the DSAs operated by EuroView.
• promotion of and help to provide connectivity to DSAs running at public administrations.
It is EuroView's opinion that at present the question „How can public administrations be connected to the global Directory" can only be answered in tight co-operation with DANTE.
DSAs operated by EuroView shall be connected to the global Directory, and shall thus have connections to NameFLOW-PARADISE DSAs. DSAs running at user sites shall get direct or indirect connectivity to NameFLOW-PARADISE DSAs at least as long as there are no commercial international public directory service providers. This connectivity will be provided by EuroView. Tight co-operation with DANTE is sought to accomplish this.
There may be a potential disparity of views over the question of X.500 national authorities. While for EuroView this question is currently open and has to be addressed during the course of the project, „provisional X.500 national authorities" have been established for the PARADISE pilot service. The position of DANTE on this question has yet to be clarified.
To distribute the results of EuroView to a wide supplier and user community, object classes and attribute types defined by EuroView to serve the requirements of public Administrations shall be provided to DANTE for integration into the schema used in NameFLOW-PARADISE.
Brunel University actively follows ongoing activities in DANTE.
DSAs operated by EuroView shall be connected to NameFLOW-PARADISE.
Results of EuroView in form of object class and attribute type definitions will be provided to DANTE for integration into the schema used in NameFLOW-PARADISE.
Another EWOS objective is the definition of conformance test suites to determine if a particular implementation correctly obeys the directives of the relevant functional profile.
The Directory Expert Group of EWOS (EWOS/EG DIR) has, together with ETSI TE.6, formed a common group, which aims to promote and aid in the deployment of a European Directory infrastructure. It does so by developing technical guides which provide support to Directory activities within Europe, and also by defining profiles of the Directory specifications to enable the implementation of Directory products which meet the needs of the user community. The work of the group results in European Pre-standards (ENVs).
EWOS liaises closely with AOW (Asia - Oceania Workshop) and OIW (the US base OSI Implementers Workshop), aiming at common International Standardised Profiles (ISPs).
EWOS/EG DIR/ETSI TE.6 has already achieved:
• The specification of International Standardised Profiles for the 1988 editions of the Directory.
• An EWOS Technical Guide on how to interconnect Directory Management Domains (DMDs), which provides guidelines on how to offer a comprehensive Directory service across several service providers.
• An EWOS Technical Guide on Security Architecture for the Directory which helps to identify security threats and how to guard against them.
• A tutorial on the Directory specifications.
• Abstract Test Suites for the 1988 edition of the Directory Specifications.
• Support to user groups and pilot projects.
The work on the profiles for the 1993 edition on X.500 is ongoing, and given the added complexities of this edition it might well take the next few years to complete.
Besides thorough review of the group's output, active participation in the group may be considered. EuroView's benefits of participating in the group might be the following:
1. to be able to contribute to decisions on how the European directory infrastructure will be formed.
2. to contribute to the specification of profiles that will promote directory products which meet the needs of public Administrations.
3. to obtain a good understanding of the environment in which the EuroView pilot project will operate.
4. to gain understanding of the issues related to the use of the Directory, such as naming structures, information structures and character sets.
5. to develop a knowledge of the Directory specifications through discussions within the group.
In particular point 2 might be of major interest for EuroView. To what extent EuroView can contribute to the specification of profiles depends on topics currently handled by EWOS/EG DIR/ETSI TE.6 and the status of ongoing work.
Topics currently handled by EWOS/EG DIR/ETSI TE.6 and the status of the ongoing work shall be determined and active participation should be considered.
1. X.500 Product Guide.
2. Guidelines for Top Level Naming in Europe. The objective is to provide a basis for common agreements on naming and DIT (Directory Information Tree) structuring across European countries in order to achieve a single European namespace. Issues and requirements related to structuring of the DIT as well as existing services such as NameFLOW will be considered.
3. Guidelines for Corporate Directory Deployment. The objective is to identify and provide guidance on the issues associated with the migration of a corporate directory to the X.500 Directory.
At the annual EEMA Conference in June 1995 in Amsterdam the EEMA Directory Committee showed that X.500 implementations are at hand and that they work together. The interworking demo given at the conference showed a multi-vendor demonstration of ten products of different vendors. An overview of companies providing X.500 products is given in the EEMA X.500 Product Guide.
Points 2 and 3 mentioned above are of major interest for EuroView.
The question „X.500 National Authorities", which is addressed in more detail in 3.7, is one facet of „Top Level Naming in Europe". As EuroView users (public Administrations) are, by their nature, involved in questions on national authorities in general EuroView should endorse this question in EEMA.
In a few public administrations there are ongoing projects building on corporate directories. Promoting migration to and providing migration strategies to X.500 are objectives of EuroView also. EuroView can benefit from the work done so far in EEMA on this question, but can also bring its own experience to EEMA.
Visit of the 9th Annual Conference and Exhibition from the European Electronic Messaging Association at Brussels, Belgium June 10-13, 1996.
ASID's goal is „to provide an even playing field for multiple protocol development, in the hope that the strongest and best protocols will be selected naturally and will be able to work together to provide a harmonised hybrid directory service system for the Internet" [1].
ASID is currently developing and advancing the following directory service protocols:
• LDAP, the lightweight directory access protocol.
• Internet X.500, defining new object classes and attribute types for various purposes, and defining algorithms such as UFN (User Friendly Naming).
• WHOIS++, a directory service based on a text-oriented protocol and a distributed indexing model.
• SOLO, the simple object lookup service.
The IDS working group is chartered to facilitate the integration and interoperability of current and future directories into a unified Internet directory service. This work will unite directories based on a heterogeneous set of protocols (X.500, WHOIS++, etc.).
In addition to specifying technical requirements for integration, the IDS Working Group also contributes to the administrative and maintenance issues of directory service offerings by publishing guidelines on directory data integrity, maintenance, security, and privacy and legal issues for users and administrators of directories.
The IDS Working Group will work on applications of directory technology and will track ongoing application projects. The IDS Working Group will assume responsibility for the creation and maintenance of on-line catalogues of directory services implementations. These catalogues will be periodically published as informational RFCs.
The LDAP protocol defined by the ASID group is believed to be a very useful supplement to the standard X.500 protocol, and access by LDAP will be provided by EuroView.
Active participation in these working groups is considered to be beyond the scope of the EuroView project, as EuroView is not singularly based in the Internet. Also, the meetings usually take place in America and active participation would incur high costs in both money and man power. This might be reconsidered in the future if vital interests of EuroView are affected.
The online discussion of ASID and IDS shall be followed.
Government On-Line creates a partnership betweeen countries to enable the delivery of public services electronically across international boundaries. Citizens, industry and Governments will benefit from shared information and its efficient delivery.
Government On-Line has a Directories sub-project which is co-ordinated by the Canadian Treasury Board and which has an e-mail discussion group facilitated by CCTA.
At the time of writing the standard national network providers „naturally" could have been seen in that role. This was by no means agreed implicitly and ongoing deregulation erodes this view even more.
All this led to a situation in which it is quite unclear what the national X.500 authorities in the various countries are. As a result, all organisations which want to register under a certain country entry must agree on a „volunteer" to hold the country entry, either a single organisation or a consortium which commonly manages the node.
In North America the NADF, a consortium of major network providers has taken the role of managing the nodes for the USA and Canada. In Europe the situation is less clear. While various national research network providers or national research institutions have taken the role of a „provisional X.500 national authority" during the course of the PARADISE pilot service, no official regulations have yet been implemented.
• in institutions like EEMA (see above).
• inside the EuroView user community.
The role which EuroView users would like to play and actually can play in this question is open. Wider awareness of this question is also somewhat limited.
Promote Top Level Naming in Europe.
Support further involvement of potential X.500 national authorities.
DG XIII plans to provide a TAP Telephone Directory with contact information for all projects in the TAP, their project managers, contact persons of each partner and more. The implementation of the Directory is in the responsibility of the SCOPE project. X.500 Directory services should be used for the TAP Telephone Directory.
In the case of Grasp EuroView offers a tutorial workshop on X.500 specifically aiming at the question whether X.500 might be useful for the Grasp database.
EuroView shall keep contact with the SCOPE project to promote the use of X.500 Directory service for the TAP Telephone Directory.
The programme is managed by the European Commission's Directorate General III (Industry), and is one of the components that is driving the European Union's Information Society initiative, as defined by a task force created by Commissioner Bangemann in 1994.
Within the IDA programme a project called "X.500 Directory Services for European Institutions" has been initiated in charge of DG III/B/6 of the European Commission. This project is an extension of the results of the IOP 2 project, and aims to set up an inter-institutional directory which implements a shared and distributed address base between the various institutions of the EU (European Parliament, Commission and Council).
IOP 2, focussed on directory access, was one of the interopertability projects done during the course of 1994 and 1995. A directory system is now installed on the commission server and the procedures for automatic updating are under test. Interoperability with NSPP has been tested as well as with a directory system based in UK (MAFF).
Tight co-operation with the IDA project „X.500 directory services for European Institutions" is sought.
Binary products based on ISODE Consortium technology are supplied by organisations referred to as ISODE Consortium OEMs.
To distribute the results of EuroView to a wide supplier and user community, tools or software extensions of the ISODE software shall be provided to the ISODE Consortium for integration into their core technology.
Results of EuroView in form of tools or software extensions of the ISODE software will be provided to the ISODE Consortium for integration into their core technology.