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Re: LDAP Certificate transfer syntax



I am still concerned about how dropping the ;binary transfer option that was mandated by RFC 2252 will affect the large installed base of LDAPv3 and PKI implementations (of course some PKI clients are already trying to use userCertificate without ;binary with LDAPv3 implementations, and not surprisingly there are having a difficult time).

But if consensus is to proceed with this proposal, then I think the conflict with RFC 2252 should be noted in the PKIX document (there is a lot of history behind all of this, and implementors and users who do not know all of it will undoubtedly be confused).

-Mark Smith
 Netscape


David Chadwick wrote:
Colleagues

Here is my proposed change to the section describing the LDAP syntax for
cerificates in the PKIX id
<draft-pkix-ldap-schema-03.txt> which should be published before the end
of April. As this is likely to be the most contentious part of the new
ID, I thought it would be useful to distribute this text at the earlier
possible moment.

All constructive comments welcomed

David


3.3 Certificate Syntax

A value in this transfer syntax is the binary octet string that results
from BER or DER-encoding of an X.509 public key certificate.  The
following string states the OID assigned to this syntax:

      ( 1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.8 DESC 'Certificate' )

Servers must preserve values in this syntax exactly as given when
storing and retrieving them.


Note. Due to the changes from X.509(1988) to X.509(1993) and subsequent
changes to the ASN.1 definition to support certificate extensions in
X.509(1997), no character string transfer syntax is defined for
certificates. The BNF notation in RFC 1778 [12] for "User Certificate"
MUST NOT be used. Values in this syntax MUST be transferred as BER or
DER encoded octets. The use of the ;binary encoding option, i.e. by
requesting or returning the attributes with descriptions
"userCertificate;binary" or "caCertificate;binary" has no effect on the
transfer syntax.