Re: 'countryName' in core.schema (was : (ITS#5236) core.ldif differs from core.schema)

[Howard Chu <hyc@symas.com>]

Michael Ströder wrote:
> Michael Ströder wrote:
> > following up on this because some older schema files reference
> > 'countryName' (and worked with RE23).
> >
> > Howard Chu wrote:
> > > I'm puzzled why RFC4519 drops the 'countryName' alias for this type
> > > from the RFC2256 definition.
> > Me too...
>
> It was also not in RFC 2256. But it is still listed in RFC 4519 in the
> table of chapter IANA considerations for OID 2.5.4.6.

Kurt, any idea what happened here? RFC4519 Appendix A note 28 says 
specifically "Changed the 'c' definition to be consistent with X.500." But 
there is no explicit reference to 'c' as the name of the attribute in 1993 
X.520. It strikes me that this was a gratuitous change that breaks existing 
implementations, and did not fall under LDAPbis' charter to clarify existing 
usage and ambiguities in the LDAPv3 spec.

X.520 only lists "countryName" as the name of this attribute. Also as Michael 
points out, both 'c' and 'countryName' are in the LDAP descriptors registry 
section of the IANA Considerations (section 4). It looks like the actual 
registry is correct, and omitting the long names from the schema definition in 
section 2 is an error. (Likewise for quite a large number of the other 
attributes in section 2.)

It's also worth pointing out, if harmonization with X.500 was the real goal, 
that stateOrProvinceName is also broken; in X.520 the shortname for this 
attribute is just 'S' not 'st' as used in LDAP.
--
  -- Howard Chu
  Chief Architect, Symas Corp.  http://www.symas.com
  Director, Highland Sun        http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
  Chief Architect, OpenLDAP     http://www.openldap.org/project/