Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!JERRY.INRIA.FR!huitema
From: huitema@JERRY.INRIA.FR
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
Subject: Re: X500: Does alias have to point to an existing entry?
Message-ID: <8910021024.AA09847@jerry>
Date: 2 Oct 89 10:24:28 GMT
References: <7300@ditmela.oz>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 19

There is much more to say about aliases than just the consistency
problem. One worst point is that, after some decision of
``unification'', aliases are treated ``almost as'' normal entries.
There is not much syntactical difference between the ``aliased object''
attribute and e.g. ``see also''; the only thing is that one expect the
DSA to follow alias paths during name resolution and (some) searches.
But it seems to be possible to construct an object like:

Name=some useful name
Class= my-private-alias-extension, alias
Aliased-object= the real name of the beast
Telephone-number= the pink (or blue?) page values, 
	different from aliased object.

This may lead to interesting results, e.g. a search on:
	telephone number (base object) = pink value?
yelding different results if aliasing is enforced or not...

Christian Huitema