Wither directory services?

["James L. Weiner" <jlw@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I noticed in the minutes a reference to "directory services." Having not been there I wasn't sure of the context. It would seem to me a shame that any scheduling standard wouldn't address the issue of its implication to directory services - even if only at the level in which you would address recommendations for MIME encoding. At some point there will be standardization on formats for objects corresponding to person and place (room) etc. and it would seem that their use in calendaring should be considered in any design. In addition, there is also the issue of object definition to allow a calendar to be "advertised" in a directory.

Roland Alden's note on the notion of "location" and "attendee" gives examples of why these objects are important to scheduling. Given that vCard is, I believe, also being put forth as a interchange format for the "person" object for directory services, there is at least an implicit reference.

I believe the current work on LDAP will have a dramatic impact on calendaring applications and it would be nice to see the deployment of directories that list objects that can be usefully imported into future calendaring applications.