Subject: [Geopriv] The GEOPRIV Terminology Jungle

From: "Hannes Tschofenig" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:28:08 +0200

Hi all, 

I would like to start a discussion about the terminology in 
http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-barnes-geopriv-lo-sec-05.txt

Here is Figure 3 from the draft: 

   +----------+                +----------+
   |          |                |  Rule    |+
   |  Target  |                |  Maker(s)||
   |          |                |          ||
   +----------+                +----------+|
        ^|                      +----------+
        || Positioning              | Rules
        || Protocol                 | Protocol
        ||                          |
        |V                          V        LO (w/ Rules)
   +----------+                +----------+   Conveyance   +----------+
   |Location  | LO (w/o Rules) | Location |+   Protocol    |Location  |
   |Generator |--------------->| Server(s)||-------+------>|Recipient |
   |          |                |          ||               |          |
   +----------+                +----------+|               +----------+
                               +----------+
   <-----------><-----------------------------------------><----------->
    Positioning                Distribution                 Receipt

As you might have noticed a new term showed up, namely Positioning Protocol,
but another term "LCP" disappeared (LCP become a conveyance protocol). The
dereferencing protocol and LIS are also not present in this figure. 

I could now reference all the different documents we have and list how they
define some of these entities and you will quickly notice that every
document essentially has slightly different terminology. 

That's innovative and might get us a step closer to the Pulitzer Prize.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be confusing when we want to tell other
people what we do in the group. 

Let us briefly describe the high-level concepts that are relevant for the
work and then see how many terms are left: 

PROTOCOLS:

A) Please send me location (or a reference to it) corresponding to the
following identifier. 

  There is the question whether we need to differentiate the following
cases: 
   - Location of the server (see previously defined LIS vs. LS terms)
   - What location info do I get (my own or someone else's)
   - What information do I present (IP address, some form of URI, identity
information, etc.)

  I suggest not to define different terms for these sub-categories.

  Example: Retrieval Protocol 

B) Here is location (or a reference to it) 
(This is the case where no prior request was made.)

   - Final information or only measurements 
   - Something in relationship to the policies that are being check (LG
sending something vs. LS sending something)

  I suggest not to define different terms for these sub-categories. 

  Example: Conveyance Protocol

C) Mechanism that is used to upload, modify and delete access control
policies

  Examples: Rules Protocol

ENTITIES: 

1) Rule Maker 

   Pretty much uncontroversal 

2) Entity that makes location information available 

   Suggestion: Location Server

3) Location Recipient

   Pretty much uncontroversal 

4) Target

CONCEPTS:

A) Location Object (LI + sticky policies)

B) Location Information (civic & geo info without sticky policies)

C) Location Object Reference 
 
D) We may need to describe the two different types of policies we have
(sticky policy vs. access control policy). Not sure about that. 

So, in order to avoid turning the GEOPRIV work into rocket science I suggest
to strongly simplify the terminology (and then use the same terminology in
all our documents -- obviously not the onces that got published already). 

Ciao
Hannes