public comments on P3P postal element and ECML

David and Donald,

Thank you for your comments on the postal element in the P3P
specification and its relationship to ECML [1], [2]. The P3P specification
working group reviewed your requests (and followed up via
a telephone conversation with David), and we have decided to
leave the postal field the way it currently is.

The P3P spec on which the ECML data schema was based
(from about a year and a half ago), included a base data
schema in whcih all of the elements of the data schema were
typed. This data schema was designed to be used with a P3P
user agent that would automatically send data
elements in response to data requests in P3P policies. Since
then we have removed automatic data transfer from P3P, and
we have removed typing from the base data schema. Part of
our motivation to remove typing was to address some I18N
issues, in which it was difficult to type some of our fields in
a way that was not specific to a specifc country. We have
basically switched to a schema that is designed to represent
data conceptually, in hierarchical structures, without saying
anything about the actual form the data might take. While
there may in fact be a one-to-one mapping between many of
our base data elements and elements in a typical HTML
form, we do not expect this to always be the case. For example,
we expect some forms to have multiple elements that all map
to the same element in the P3P base data schema. This
would likely be the case for the street address component
of the postal address.

We expect more work to be done by other groups (ECML,
XML Forms, etc.) in figuring out how to integrate P3P with
HTML/XML forms. We expect that what ever convention is
developed will reference the P3P base data schema for
privacy purposes, but a more specific schema that includes
type information, for form-filling purposes. We can imagine a
number of different ways this might be done, but that is beyond
the scope of our work.

Regards,

Lorrie Cranor
P3P Specification Working Group Chair

1.
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-p3p-public-comments/2000Oct/0046.htm
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2.
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-p3p-public-comments/2000Oct/0043.htm
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lorrie Faith Cranor <lorrie@research.att.com>
AT&T Labs-Research, Shannon Laboratory
180 Park Ave. Room A241, Florham Park, NJ 07932
http://lorrie.cranor.org/    973-360-8607

Received on Wednesday, 15 November 2000 10:31:13 UTC