Glossary of directory related terms

ACL   Access Control List; a mechanism to restrict access to data
      stored in an X.500 Directory Service

ADMD  Administrative Management Domain

ADDMD Administrative Directory Management Domain

ANSI  American National Standards Institute

ASID  Access and Searching of Internet Directories (IETF-WG)

Attribute  Attributes belong to an entry in the Directory Service,
           and contain information belonging to that entry

BLT        BulkLoadTool; a tool to download an existing database into
           a DSA 

Centroid   A type of index information used in the Whois++ standard
           and possibly used in an integrated Directory Service 

CRL     Certificate Revocation List

DAP     Directory Access Protocol; protocol used between a DUA and
        a DSA, to access the Directory Information 

DE      Directory Enquiry; an ascii-based DUA interface 

DIB     Directory Information Base - the collective distributed
        information held in the directory

DIT     Directory Information Tree; the hierarchy of the
        distributed database that makes up an X.500 service

DMD     Directory Management Domain

DNS     Domain Name System

DSA     Directory System Agent - entity that provides DUAs and
        other DSAs access to the DIB

DSP     Directory System Protocol: the protocol used between two DSAs

DUA     Directory User Agent: the user interface that communicates          
        with the directory

DUI     Directory User Interface

EDSG    European Directory Services Group

EEMA    European Electronic Messaging Association

EIDQ    European International Directory Enquiries

EMA     Electronic Messaging Association (North America)

Entry   A Directory Service contains entries on people,
        organisations, countries, etc. Entries belong to a certain
        object class, and information on entries is stored in
        attributes  

EPII    European Project on Information Infrastructure

Eurescom  European Institute for Research and Strategic Studies in
          Telecommunications, collaborative research and development
          institute of European PNOs

EWOS      European Workshop for Open Systems

Find      Common Indexing Protocol (IETF-WG)

GDA       Global Directory Agent

ICE-TEL   Interworking Public Key Infrastructure for Europe (EC
          Telematics project)

IDS       Internet Directory Synchronisation (IETF-WG)

IETF      Internet Engineering Task Force

IDM       Interactive Data Manager; a DUA interface that is useful or
          maintaining a large set of data 

ISO       International Standardization Organisation Responsible for
          a wide range of standards, including networking

ISODE     A research tool developed to study the upper layers of OSI

Isode Ltd  A consortium of commercial and non-commercial
           organisations that supports the development of the 
           ISODE software

ITU-T  International Telecommunication Union - Telecommunication,
       a standards-making body for telecommunication operators (PTTs) 

LDAP   Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, Internet standard for a
       lightweight version of DAP running over TCP/IP

Master DSA   A DSA that serves the entry for a country, and that
             holds information on all DSAs available within that
             country 

MTA    Message Transfer Agent

NADF   North America Directory Forum

NIST   US National Institute of Standards and Technology

NP     NameFLOW-Paradise

Object Class  Entries in a Directory Service belong to an Object
              Class to indicate their type and characteristics; e.g.,
              Object Class 'person'

OSF    Open Software Foundation

OSI    Open Standards Interconnection; an international    
       standardization program, facilitated by ISO and ITU to 
       develop standards for data networking 

PEM    Privacy Enhanced Mail; an Internet standard for sending secure
       E-mail

PGP    Pretty Good Privacy; a public key encryption and signature
       package

PKCS   Public Key Cryptography Standards (IETF-WG)

PKIX   Public Key Infrastructure using X.509 (IETF-WG)

PP     An implementation of the X.400 recommendations built on top of
       Isode 

PRDMD  Private Directory Management Domain

PRMD   Private Management Domain

QBM    Query by Mail

Quipu  An implementation of the X.500(1988) recommendations that is
       build on top of ISODE 

RFC    Request For Comment, Internet series of publications 

RFC 1006  Internet standard that specifies how to run OSI
          applications over TCP/IP

SMTP      Internet Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

TCP/IP    Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol, the
          two best known Internet protocols, TCP corresponds roughly
          to layer 4 of the OSI model (the transport layer), IP
          corresponds to layer 3 (the network layer)

TTP       Trusted Third Party 

UFN       User Friendly Naming; an Internet standard for identifying
          an entry in X.500 by a user friendly name 

URL       Uniform Resource Locator; an address for any document on
          the Internet

Whois++   An Internet directory services protocol; a possible
          alternative for X.500 

WPS       White Pages Service; a Directory Service that contains  
          (addressing) information on people and organisations

X.400     ITU Standard defining electronic mail exchange in open
          systems

X.500     ITU standard defining electronic distributed directory in
          open systems