RFC 2258 (rfc2258) - Page 2 of 15
Internet Nomenclator Project
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 2258 Internet Nomenclator Project January 1998
1. Introduction
Hundreds of organizations provide directory information through the
CCSO name service protocol [3]. Although the organizations provide a
wealth of information about people, finding any one person can be
difficult because each organization's server is independent. The
different servers have different database schemas (attribute names
and data formats). The 300+ CCSO servers have more than 900
different attributes to describe information about people. Very few
common attributes exist. Only name and email occur in more than 90%
of the servers [4]. No special support exists for cross-server
searches, so searching can be slow and expensive.
The goal of the Internet Nomenclator Project is to provide fast,
integrated access to the information in the CCSO servers. The
project is the first large-scale use of the Nomenclator system.
Nomenclator is a more general system than a white pages directory
service. It is a scalable, extensible information system for the
Internet.
Nomenclator answers descriptive (i.e. relational) queries. Users can
locate information about people, organizations, hosts, services,
publications, and other objects by describing their attributes.
Nomenclator achieves fast descriptive query processing through an
active catalog, and extensive meta-data and data caching. The active
catalog constrains the search space for a query by returning a list
of data repositories where the answer to the query is likely to be
found. Meta-data and data caching keep frequently used query
processing resources close to the user, thus reducing communication
and processing costs.
Through the Internet Nomenclator Project, users can query any CCSO
server, regardless of its attribute names or data formats, by
specifying the query to Nomenclator (see Figure 1). Nomenclator
provides a world view of the data in the different servers. Users
express their queries in this world view. Nomenclator returns the
answer immediately if it has been cached by a previous query. If not,
Nomenclator uses its active catalog to constrain the query to the
subset of relevant CCSO servers. The speed of the query is
increased, because only relevant servers are contacted. Nomenclator
translates the global query into local queries for each relevant CCSO
server. It then translates the responses into the format of the
world view.
Ordille Informational