Subject: RE: Revised Matched Values Draft

From: "Lloyd, Alan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 00:10:53 +1000

A "for ever" debate !

-

> In these cases with complex filters - one relies on the user to have a
> lot of pre and detailed knowledge.. 

No, it should be the user interface that has the knowledge,  order..not the 
user.

Alan: NO the user interface has the mechanisms to display syntax - and the
pre defined procedures and configuration  to get the displays in order - I
dont call this knowledge.. I call this "configuration" .

The user applies their "knowledge" to interpret what has been displayed for
the purpose required.

So for example, I retrieve an attribute and the interface does 
not understand it, but the interface knows how to construct a search 
to fetch the single schema definition. This could even be done 
automatically without any user intervention. 

Alan: Oh I see - we dont know what this is - but we do know what the syntax
of this is (what ever it is)... and then we will generate the code to
graphically display that syntax that we guessed - ?

It is not necessarily an 
engineer that uses this feature. Or, I want to fetch an encryption 
certificate to send an email, so, the interface software knows hows 
to construct the search operation, but has a very simplified screen 
display to the user.

Alan:  thats OK - directory enabled client applications should be doing the
detailed directory work..

Ultimately, you cannot escape from the user interface having to 
know about the directory schema. You client (Dxplorer - still one of 
the best on the market to my mind, and free at that) has the 
complete X.501 schema built into it and can be configured to know 
about more elements. 

Alan: Yes - we know...

However what it is missing in Dxplorer is 
knowing for example that ordering matching is not applicable to 
telephone numbers or titles. 

Alan: One needs semantic information  to order things - eg Rank -
Geographical points, etc..So who is standardising on that then.. What
happens when a new value is stored - ie when in London how do you deal with
entries that have a row of cities and you need to order them according to
"local" distance??
See my other response to Sandi - re mail lists.. and application specific
directory utilities.

It allows the user to try these out and 
get an error from the server. So an enhanced Dxplorer would know 
that when I am searching for a certificate that certificateExactMatch 
and certificateMatch should be used and bring up an appropriate 
display for this. All the user needs to know is
i) I want to find a certificate
ii) the display shows me the types I can search for
iii) the display optionally asks me about validity periods
iv) the display optionally asks me which CA I am interested in etc. 
etc.

Alan: watch out for "certificate and CRL component matching"... :-)

The point is, the user does not need to know the schema, the client 
software does, and it should guide the user through this.

Alan: and being a logical person - the client needs to be configured with
the syntax of the schema - and from a user perspective if I am guided
through something and making decisions about the next step, then I must be
using knowledge of the schema and its values relative to my comprension of
what I want and where I want to be...

If I dont have any knowledge of anything at the start or at the end of the
process...
how and why did I use a directory in the first place - and how can I
remember any results or how I got them.. :_))

Ooooh look - I just got data...

regards - and send us a pack of Boddies (beer) if you can. alan

David

***************************************************

David Chadwick
IS Institute, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT
Tel +44 161 295 5351  Fax +44 161 745 8169
Mobile +44 790 167 0359
Email [email-masked]
Home Page  http://www.salford.ac.uk/its024/chadwick.htm
Understanding X.500  http://www.salford.ac.uk/its024/X500.htm
X.500/LDAP Seminars http://www.salford.ac.uk/its024/seminars.htm
Entrust key validation string MLJ9-DU5T-HV8J

***************************************************

---

From: "David Chadwick" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 15:44:30 +0100

Date forwarded: 	Wed, 12 Jul 2000 07:10:56 -0700 (PDT)
From:           	"Lloyd, Alan" <[email-masked]>
To:             	[email-masked]
Copies to:      	[email-masked]
Subject:        	RE: Revised Matched Values Draft
Date sent:      	Thu, 13 Jul 2000 00:10:53 +1000
Forwarded by:   	[email-masked]

> A "for ever" debate !
Cut
David

David Chadwick