Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!jarthur!ucivax!gateway
From: Christian.Huitema@mirsa.inria.fr (Christian Huitema)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400
Subject: Re: Printable format (was: Re: ISO/CCITT meeting report)
Message-ID: <9008160822.AA12789@jerry.inria.fr>
Date: 16 Aug 90 08:27:35 GMT
Lines: 38
Approved: usenet@ICS.UCI.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of 15 Aug 90 16:06:00 +0000.
             <"90-08-15-16:06:23.73*GRZ027"@DBNGMD21.BITNET>

Peter,

You are quite right with your analogy with telephone numbers and the
like. In fact, the X.400 addressing was deliberately mapped, from
the beginning, onto the postal addressing -- and this is part of the
problem.

The initial philosophy (1981) was that the envelope would carry the
name of the recipient. Yes, the name, not the address; the name
considered as a set of attribute assertions, to be used in a
directory loosely modelled as a relational data base. The problem
was indeed that such a world wide distributed data base was not
available; an ad-hoc partitioning had to be made, hence the
insertion of ADMD and PRMD codes, which play mostly the same role as
zipcode and po-box in postal addresses. The hypothesis being that
once the letter has been dropped by some public or private service
in the po-box (or PRMD), the remaining attribute will be used by
some sort of SQL query to the local directory.

I one follows that philosophy, one as to take into account two
remarks:

* the only elements which need to be added to a business card are
the identification of the zipcode and po-box, which are probably
common to all the members of an organisation. There is no need to
duplicate the other stuff, like first name or unit: one should be
able to read them from the "text" portion of the business card.

* the whole stuff is bulky and error prone. Some sort of telephone
number, preferably a sequence of short tokens to allow for
distributed hierarchical allocation, would be welcomed.

In fact, a step in the secund direction was taken by the clear
distinction between directory name and mail address in the 1988
version of X.400. The only thing which is left now is to let the
address look like an address...

Christian Huitema