Re: Non-numeric OIDs

[Michael.Smith@domino1.cuny.edu]

(I apologize for this vile e-mail format -- not my choice.) 



"Kurt D. Zeilenga" <Kurt@OpenLDAP.org> wrote: 

>At 06:26 AM 4/27/2005, Michael.Smith@domino1.cuny.edu wrote:
>
>>I'm particularly interested in allowing non-numeric OIDs 
>>in schema definitions
>
>I assume you don't mean NAMEs, which are short textual
>strings, but malformed OIDs. 

What I am talking about is character 
strings that look like "fooBarPerson-oid" appearing in schema 
definitions in the place where you would normally expect 
to see a dotted-numeric oid. Here's what they look like: 

attributetype ( 
        fooBarComPersonRole-oid 
        NAME 'fooBarComPersonRole' 
        SYNTAX 1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.15  )

This string 'fooBarComPersonRole-oid', as far as 
can tell, isn't mapped to a numeric OID in the proper 
form anywhere. iPlanet appears to use it tout-court 
as the oid. I know, it didn't make sense to me either, 
and if there's anybody out there who knows the internals 
of iPlanet well enough to set me straight, I'd appreciate 
hearing from them. Alternatively, if anybody else has 
confronted the problem of importing such definitions into 
openLDAP and found a way to do it, that would also 
be most interesting to hear about. 

>I suggest you ask the schema developer which OIDs
>the alphanumeric names are equivalent to so that
>you can properly replace this name with the OID in
>dotted-decimal form.

I wish I could ask the "schema developers" anything. 
Consultants, you know. Before my time, and now long 
gone.  For all I know they're in jail now -- and if 
they're not, I'm tempted to say, they ought to be.