2000-03-13ieee 1484.13, improvements for wd2, f. farance, ©2000 edutool.com1 simple identifiers sid...

2000-03-13 IEEE 1484.13, Improvements for WD2, F. Farance, ©2000 Edutool.Com 1

Simple IdentifiersSID Improvements WD2 WD32000-03-13

Frank Farance, +1 212 486 4700, [email protected]

a division of Farance Inc.

Presentation to LTSC Student Identifiers WG

(IEEE 1484.13) http://ltsc.ieee.org/wg13


Agenda Summary

• Review of Simple Identifiers

• Review of Ballot Comments

• Recommendations for Improvements

• Action Items for Next Meeting


Student Identifiers,Simple Identifiers

• Need common method for identifying students– How do a write a student’s identifier– Generalized to non-students (e.g., teachers)

• Common method for authenticating identifiers– Not it scope of WG (for now)

• Uses of Identifiers– Sign-on/session identifier– Can link several types of learner information


Related Work• Other types of identifiers:

– Social security numbers: problems, both identity and authentication

– Kerberos: compatibility issues among realms– LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol):

solving “phone directory” problem, not an identifier solution

– RFC 2377 -- directory names, map in/out– E-mail names: may be used– UUIDs and other GUIDs may be used


Technical Constraints

• Identifiers are strings with limited character set• Identifiers support international character sets• Identifiers can be embedded in filenames• Identifiers can be embedded in URLs• Identifiers can be embedded in E-mail

addresses• Identifiers can be embedded in domains• Identifiers might not specify domains


Strings With LimitedCharacter Set

• Identifiers may include the following characters:A B C D E F G H I J K L MN O P Q R S T U V W X Y Za b c d e f g h I j k l mn o p q r s t u v w x y z0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9_ - . % @

• Some characters can be problematic, e.g., “@”• Example: “john.doe.ps217.nyc.ny.us” or “id6374980”


Standards Wording

• Identifiers shall consist of “name components” separated by “name separators”

• Name components shall consist of the following encoding characters:A B C D E F G H I J K L MN O P Q R S T U V W X Y Za b c d e f g h I j k l mn o p q r s t u v w x y z0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 _ - @


Support forInternational Characters

• International characters are based on ISO 10646 name and described as 8-, 16-, or 32-bits: 8-bit characters: %hh 16-bit characters: %uhhhh 32-bit characters: %Uhhhhhhhh

• Allows any international character, example:“Côté” ==> C%e2t%dc


Standards Wording

• The name separator shall be the period “.”.

• Characters that are not one of the encoding characters shall be represented in one of the following forms:– 0x00 to 0xFF: %hh– 0x0000 to 0xFFFF: %uhhhh– 0x00000000 to 0xFFFFFFFF: %Uhhhhhhhh

• where “h” is a hexadecimal digit.


Naming Policy• Informative wording ... incorporate as Annex• Naming policy is outside scope of SID• Name registries can have allow more than one SID

per person• Name registries can restrict SIDs to one per person

(higher validation)• Singularity is a policy issue• If you need “singular” identifiers, only accept

identifiers from registries with “singular” policy, e.g., “unique.com”


Embedding Simple IdentifiersIn Other Namespaces

• Informative wording ... incorporate as Annex• Compatibility with other namespaces is critical for

widespread adoption• Filename example:

/home/C%e2t%dc• URL example:

http://www.xyz.edu/users/C%e2t%dc• E-mail example:

mailto:C%e2t%[email protected]• Domain example:

C%e2t%dc.users.xyz.edu


Outstanding Issues

• Should percent characters be used? Open Issue• Should plus characters be used? No.• Should minus characters be used? Yes, but what

about underscore?• Should we specify mapping to programming

language identifiers? Informative annex• Should periods define name separators?

Informative annex• Should there be a minimum-maxima length?


Future Work• Develop document ready for Sponsor Ballot

at 2000-09 meeting -- revision to PAR?

• Fill in missing words, rationale

• Annex on mapping well-known registries

• Annex on “dot” conventions

• Investigate compatibility with 1484.14 conventions?

• List ISO standards and IETF specifications in a bibliography

2000-03-13ieee 1484.13, improvements for wd2, f. farance, ©2000 edutool.com1 simple identifiers sid...

Documents