>>>>> Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam...> writes:
>> Hello. Is there a standardized (or regularly used) attribute defined
>> for continents, besides country, st, locality?
> Not that I've ever seen. There are a couple of definitions of
> longitude/latitude floating about, but nothing for continent.
> Debian:
> attributetype ( 1.3.6.1.4.1.9586.100.4.2.7
> NAME 'latitude'
> DESC 'latitude coordinate'
> EQUALITY caseExactIA5Match
> SUBSTR caseExactIA5SubstringsMatch
> SYNTAX 1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.26 SINGLE-VALUE )
[...]
... One of the biggest shocks I've ever experienced in my life
was caused by the observation that there's /infinite/ /number/
of (latitude, longitude) pairs for (almost) any given point on
the Earth surface, depending on the reference ellipsoid [1]
being used. IOW, there's no point in talking of any latitude
value before the reference ellipsoid has been specified (though
WGS 84 [2] is probably the one used most often.)
This leads me to a question: given that a given object may have
several (latitude, longitude) pairs, what would be the best way
to deal them with LDAP? I could imagine the following
solutions:
* designate some ``standard coordinate system'' (like: WGS 84)
for the attributes (like: `latitudeWGS84', `longitudeWGS84');
convert the values on the client side whenever a non-standard
coordinate system is to be used;
* allow any coordinate system, which then should be specified by
a separate attribute;
* allow any number of (coordinate system, latitude, longitude)
triplets to be specified.
To my mind, the first approach leads to potential information
loss, as there may be rounding errors in the conversion process,
or there could simply be no conversion function at the moment
when the data is to be stored.
The last approach seems to be the most flexible. However, I
don't know if it's possible to ``tie'' attributes into such a
``triples'' with LDAP? Should these triplets be granted its own
syntax and, consequently, an attribute? (like: geoSurfacePoint.)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_ellipsoid
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGS_84
--
FSF associate member #7257
