Subject: Where is the OID "dot convention" spelled out?

From: Michael Mealling <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 07:27:20 -0400

For all the ASN.1 folks out there:

I'm in the midst of writing up the OID URN namespace document 
(see http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-mealling-oid-urn-00.txt)
and it has come to my attention that none of the ASN.1 standards 
define the dot-notation that we use in all sorts of RFCs. I'm specifically
referring to the practice of inserting dots in between each arc as in:
1.3.6.1.4.1

Is anyone aware if this is actually spelled out somewhere? I don't
have the newest ASN.1 docs in front of me so if the're in there
a page reference would be great.

-MM

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Michael Mealling	|      Vote Libertarian!       | www.rwhois.net/michael
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From: "Kurt D. Zeilenga" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 12:15:52 -0700

See RFC 1778, 2.15:
   Values of type objectIdentifierSyntax are encoded according to the  
   following BNF:
   
     <oid> ::= <descr> | <descr> '.' <numericoid> | <numericoid>
   
     <descr> ::= <keystring>

     <numericoid> ::= <numericstring> | <numericstring> '.' <numericoid>
   
   In the above BNF, <descr> is the syntactic representation of an
   object descriptor. When encoding values of type
   objectIdentifierSyntax, the first encoding option should be used in 
   preference to the second, which should be used in preference to the
   third wherever possible. That is, in encoding object identifiers,
   object descriptors (where assigned and known by the implementation)
   should be used in preference to numeric oids to the greatest extent
   possible. For example, in encoding the object identifier representing
   an organizationName, the descriptor "organizationName" is preferable
   to "ds.4.10", which is in turn preferable to the string "2.5.4.10".

This was refined in RFC 2252, 4.1.  In particular, it eliminates
 the "ds.4.10" form.

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From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 22:22:25 +0200

>    Values of type objectIdentifierSyntax are encoded according to the

thanks Kurt - i've included the reference on 
http://www.alvestrand.no/objectid/index.html!

              Harald

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Harald Tveit Alvestrand, EDB Maxware, Norway
[email-masked]