Subject: A couple of questions

From: Xiaowei Yang <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 21:34:42 -0400

Hi,

I have a couple of questions about the Service Location Protocols.

1. What are the ordering and matching rules for attributes of the
"opaque" type? It seems RFC 2608 left it unspecified. If there is no
matching rule for this type of attribute, why is it there?

2. Why is the meta information, such as template-version,
template-description, template-url-syntax advertised as the service
attributes (according to examples in rfc 2609) ? It seems weird to me
that a UA will use such attributes to discover a service location. 

3. How is the SLP deployed in the real life? Is there any standard
template defined? Has anyone found that the limited number of
attribute types a problem? For example, an attribute "location" may be
a string that specifies a postal-address or a floor number or a
geographical location. But as strings, those will not match even they
mean the same location. 

I will appreciate any explanation. I am not on the list. Please reply
to me.

	Thanks,
	--Xiaowei

---

From: kempf <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 18:43:01 -0700 (PDT)

>matching rule for this type of attribute, why is it there?

RFC 2608 is clear on this. The only matching rule allowed is "=".

>that a UA will use such attributes to discover a service location. 

They are not advertised as service attributes, they are just
structured that way, although I suppose you could advertise
them if you wanted. The principle is the same as the way LDAP has its 
meta-information structured. 

>geographical location. But as strings, those will not match even they

That's why standardized service type descriptions are important.
There is a template repository, I believe the URL is in RFC 2609.

		jak