Questions about OpenID Attribute Properties Draft 1

[Drummond Reed]

Frank,

+1 to all your points about this proposed vocabulary.

It's not that the submission is lacking, it's just that even with what
appear to be the very simplest types of data, the issues of classification
and categorization become exponentially complex very fast. For example, the
OASIS Customer Information Quality (CIQ) Technical Committee's Extensible
Name and Address Language (xNAL)
(http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=ciq) is designed
to support:

    * Addresses of 241+ Countries
    * Represented in 5,000+ languages/dialects
    * With 130+ Address Formats, and
    * With 36+ Personal Name formats

(This all from their FAQ at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ciq/faq.php
-- highly recommended for background on why the subject is so complex.)

I believe that with regard to data interchange vocabulary, OpenID must, just
like with all its other specs, take a road that is "as lightweight as
possible but no lighter" (to paraphrase one of my favorite Einstein quotes).

Figuring out exactly where/how to reach that golden state with regard to
vocabulary is where the rocket science lies.

=Drummond 

-----Original Message-----
From: general-bounces at openid.net [mailto:general-bounces at openid.net] On
Behalf Of Frank I. Reiter
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 2:01 PM
To: general at openid.net
Cc: specs at openid.net
Subject: Questions about OpenID Attribute Properties Draft 1

Barry Ferg wrote:
> The first draft of the OpenID Attribute Properties specification has
> been posted to
> "http://openid.net/specs/openid-attribute-properties-list-1_0-01.html".
>   
Perhaps some of this has been discussed to death already, somewhere, and 
if so please forgive me.  Here are a few questions that come to mind as 
I read this spec.

Why are address elements grouped by type rather than by address?  (IE, 
why is it contact/postalcode/home rather than contact/home/postalcode?

Why are email addresses listed under Internet (/contact/internet/email) 
but IM and web based contact information is not?

Did you consider personal/business/etc. email addresses?  Classifying my 
email addresses this way is at least as important to me as classifying 
my telephone numbers this way.

Frank.
_______________________________________________
general mailing list
general at openid.net
http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/general