At 02:32 PM 3/1/96 +1100, Steven Legg <s.legg@trl.telstra.com.au> wrote:
DistinguishedName wasn't defined the way it was because of ASN.1.
I'd always assumed it was just the ugly X.400 email naming convention.
No one at Telstra Research would want to replace DistinguishedName with a byte string because of all the constant reparsing, cutting and splicing that would entail. We would end up writing more code, not less. Given the sort of heavy duty processing we do to DNs, trying to pack a DN into a string is considered brain dead. Those rich semantics matter to us.
I don't see how a DN is any better than an Internet-style Domain Naming Service name, except that it puts a bunch of pre-defined labels on subdomain parts which can generally be guessed from context and aren't very relevant to computer programs. Compare joeuser@purchasing.fnord.edu.au vs. /FN=Joseph/Ln=User/NN=Joe/OU=Purchasing/O=First.National.Organization.- [for].Research.[and].Development/S=Academic/C=AU/ Is there really any additional information in the latter, except possibly some detail you could have looked up with a "whois" request? #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com / billstewart@attmail.com +1-415-442-2215 # http://www.idiom.com/~wcs Pager +1-408-787-1281