RE: Representation of OIDs as URIs

     Why, exactly, are we including the organization specification of the
OID in a URI as a subordinate of the domain name?  Both "etsi.org" and "OID
0.4.0" refer to the same organization, after all.  A meaningful URI for the
example below is more like:
     http://www.etsi.org/oid/1733.1.4.1 or
     http://www.etsi.org/oid/electronic-signature-standard/1.4.1

     The one real advantage of using URI's over OID's to a programmer is
that the programmer can find the assigning authority, and then have a
reasonable chance of finding the definition.

          Tom Gindin

"Karl Scheibelhofer" <Karl.Scheibelhofer@iaik.at>@w3.org on 11/27/2000
03:55:14 AM

Sent by:  w3c-ietf-xmldsig-request@w3.org


To:   "Olivier Dubuisson" <Olivier.Dubuisson@francetelecom.fr>, "XMLSigWG"
      <w3c-ietf-xmldsig@w3.org>
cc:   <SEC_ESI@LIST.ETSI.FR>
Subject:  RE: Representation of OIDs as URIs



> > e.g.,
> >
> http://www.etsi.org/oid/itu-t(0)/identified-organization(4)/etsi(0
> )/electron
> > ic-signature-standard(1733)/part1(1)/idupMechanism(4)/etsiESv1(1)
>
> You should only use the number form such as in:
> http://www.etsi.org/oid/0/4/0/1733/1/4/1
> because the name form is not mandatory and synonyms can sometimes exist.
>

i still prefer the version with names. i think that it is not really a
problem that there can be synonyms for a name. there is even no requirement
that there is just one OID for the same thing; e.g. there are several
different OIDs identifying DSA, 1.3.14.3.2.27 and 1.2.840.10040.4.3.

> Of course, this is not readible but you could define aliases at
> each level of
> the registration tree as I did on the ASN.1 website
> <http://asn1.elibel.tm.fr/oid/>. This would allow you to write
> things like:
> http://www.etsi.org/oid/itu-t/identified-organization/etsi/electro
> nic-signature-standard/part1/idupMechanism/etsiESv1
> ...


>
> There is a draft RFC (the author was Meallow if my memory serves me
right)
> that addresses the translation of OIDs into URNs. I sent comment to the
> authors and proposed him to implement an OID-to-URN translator on the
> ASN.1 web site, but I don't know what is the status of is document now.

yes, i found if. it is RFC 3001. but it seems that "oid" was actually not
registered through IANA yet. at least i did not find it, when i was on
their
web-site. i also saw, that they did not use names either.

regards

  Karl Scheibelhofer

--

Karl Scheibelhofer, <mailto:Karl.Scheibelhofer@iaik.at>
Institute for Applied Information Processing and Communications (IAIK)
at Technical University of Graz, Austria, http://www.iaik.at
Phone: (+43) (316) 873-5540

Received on Monday, 27 November 2000 12:03:15 UTC