Subject: [VCARDDAV] LDAP mapping

From: Peter Mogensen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 16:08:45 +0200

Hi,

Is there any status on item 6 on the WG charter (LDAP mapping to the new 
vCard format without loss of data.) ?

I can't find any discussion on this apart from
http://www.vcarddav.org/doc/2007-07-IETF-chicago/vcard-ldap-chicago2007.pdf

But maybe there's some unofficial thoughts circulated ?

I've come to the conclusion that inetOrgPerson is absolutely useless for 
the way people use contact information today. The requirement of the 
"sn" attribute alone is enough to ruin the day.

A new standard schema, compatible with vCard4 and without inetOrgPerson 
legacy would be very useful.

Is it still on the table?

regards,
Peter Mogensen

---

From: Mike Douglass <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 10:20:21 -0400

I'd vote for dealing with that.

At the same time I would like to see a json mapping defined, though that
may be easier. Use of vcard information by ui widgets is very high on
our agenda.

Peter Mogensen wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Is there any status on item 6 on the WG charter (LDAP mapping to the
> new vCard format without loss of data.) ?
>
> I've come to the conclusion that inetOrgPerson is absolutely useless
> for the way people use contact information today. The requirement of
> the "sn" attribute alone is enough to ruin the day.
>
> A new standard schema, compatible with vCard4 and without
> inetOrgPerson legacy would be very useful.
>
> _______________________________________________
> VCARDDAV mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/vcarddav
>

-- 

Mike Douglass                           [email-masked]
Senior Systems Programmer
Communication & Collaboration Technologies      518 276 6780(voice) 2809
(fax)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 110 8th Street, Troy, NY 12180

---

From: Marc Blanchet <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 10:31:20 -0400

> Is it still on the table?

please write a draft!

Marc.

-- 
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---

From: Marc Blanchet <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 10:31:37 -0400

please write a draft!

Marc.

---

From: Peter Mogensen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 23:17:44 +0200

>> Is it still on the table?

:)
Well, before anyones does that, maybe a brief discussion about the
direction would be good.

When reading the presention by Alexey Melnikov and Kurt Zeilenga at IETF 
69, I see two items:

* That attribute options are not "good enough" - I agree, but it is 
still the closest LDAP feature I see for representing the vCard Data model.

* That inetOrgPerson is the "closest" objectclass - well... yes, But 
roundtrip loss less conversion is impossible and we can do so much 
better if we drop inetOrgPerson compatibility and create a non-legacy 
schema.

/Peter

---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 23:36:10 +0100

Peter Mogensen wrote:

> When reading the presention by Alexey Melnikov and Kurt Zeilenga at 
> IETF 69, I see two items:
>

This would be fine, but if I am to design a new object class, I would 
try to keep it as close to the inetOrgPerson as possible. By that I mean 
trying to reuse attributes used by it, when reasonable.

---

From: Peter Mogensen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 00:54:31 +0200

> trying to reuse attributes used by it, when reasonable.

Well... I would have done so too. But after 18 months experience with a 
vCard3 compatible LDAP schema running in production I must conclude that 
it is a waste of time.

inetOrgPerson has too many constraints which are incompatible with what 
people to today that there's hardly any attributes/properties left which 
can be reused. Actually, "description"/NOTE is the only one.
... And "jpegPhoto", but only because we don't want to duplicate so 
large attributes.

Problems with inetOrgPerson are (amongst others):
* "sn" is mandatory. Most ad-hoc contact info doesn't have it.
* Some attributes (like telephone numbers) have more strict syntax than 
vCards.
* No way to be write-compatible with existing inetOrgPerson application 
wrt. parameters like "PREF".
* properties which can be either inline values or URI's are complicated 
to make compatible with inetOrgPerson

Our conclussion is that inetOrgPerson is best supported by a read-only 
view of the underlying data.
And since most existing client application are read-only anyway, I don't 
think that so big a loss.

/Peter

---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 00:03:00 +0100

Peter Mogensen wrote:

>>> better if we drop inetOrgPerson compatibility and create a 
>>> non-legacy schema. 
>>
>> try to keep it as close to the inetOrgPerson as possible. By that I 
>> mean trying to reuse attributes used by it, when reasonable.
>
> Well... I would have done so too. But after 18 months experience with 
> a vCard3 compatible LDAP schema running in production I must conclude 
> that it is a waste of time.

If you've done a mapping of vCard3 to LDAP, please share it with the 
mailing list. It might be a good starting point.

> inetOrgPerson has too many constraints which are incompatible with 
> what people to today that there's hardly any attributes/properties 
> left which can be reused. Actually, "description"/NOTE is the only one.
> * Some attributes (like telephone numbers) have more strict syntax 
> than vCards.
> * No way to be write-compatible with existing inetOrgPerson 
> application wrt. parameters like "PREF".
> * properties which can be either inline values or URI's are 
> complicated to make compatible with inetOrgPerson

Right. We probably need 2 attribute for each.

> And since most existing client application are read-only anyway, I 
> don't think that so big a loss.