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