RFC2161 - A MIME Body Part for ODA

Network Working Group H. Alvestrand
Request for Comments: 2161 UNINETT
Category: EXPerimental January 1998
A MIME Body Part for ODA
Status of this Memo
This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.
Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested.
Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved.
Table of Contents
Status of this Memo ........................................ 1
1 IntrodUCtion .............................................. 1
1.1 The Application/ODA MIME content-type ................... 1
1.2 ODA - application/oda ................................... 2
2 Security Considerations ................................... 3
3 References ................................................ 4
4 Author"s Address .......................................... 4
5 Full Copyright Statement .................................. 5
1. Introduction
This document contains the definitions, originally contained in RFC
1495 and RFC1341, on how to carry ODA in MIME, and how to translate
it to its X.400 representation.
1.1. The Application/ODA MIME content-type
The "ODA" suBType of application is used to indicate that a body
contains information encoded according to the Office Document
Architecture [ODA] standards, using the ODIF representation
format. For application/oda, the Content-Type line should also
specify an attribute/value pair that indicates the document
application profile (DAP), using the key Word "profile", and the
document class, using the keyword "class".
For the keyword "class", the values "formatted", "processable" and
"formatted-processable" are legal values.
Thus an appropriate header field might look like this:
Content-Type: application/oda; profile=Q112; class=formatted
Consult the ODA standard [T.411] for further information.
The Base64 content-transfer-encoding is appropriate for carrying ODA.
1.2. ODA - application/oda
X.400 Body Part: ODA
MIME Content-Type: application/oda
Conversion: None
Comments:
The ODA body part is defined in the CCITT document T.411 [T.411],
appendix E, section E.2, "ODA identification in the P2 protocol of
MHS"
An abbreviated version of its ASN.1 definition is:
oda-body-part EXTENDED-BODY-PART-TYPE
PARAMETERS OdaBodyPartParameters
DATA OdaData
::= id-et-oda
OdaBodyPartParameters ::= SET {
document-application-profile [0] OBJECT IDENTIFIER
document-architecture-class [1] INTEGER {
formatted (0)
processable (1)
formatted-processable(2)}}
id-et-oda OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { 2 8 1 0 1 }
Mapping from X.400 to MIME, the following is done:
The Parameters.document-application-profile is mapped onto the MIME
parameter "profile" according to the table below.
Profile OBJECT IDENTIFIER
Q112 { iso (1) identified-organization (3) ewos (16)
eg (2) oda (6) profile (0) q112 (1) }
The Parameters.document-architecture-class is mapped onto the MIME
parameter "class" according to the table below.
String Integer
formatted formatted(0)
processable processable(1)
formatted-processable formatted-processable(2)
NOTE: This parameter is not defined in RFC1341.
The body of the MIME content-type is the Data part of the ODA body
part.
When mapping from MIME to X.400, the following steps are done:
The Parameters.document-application-profile and Parameters.document-
architecture-class are set from the tables above. If any of the
parameters are missing, the values for Q112 and formatted-processable
are used.
It is an option for the gateway implementor to try to Access them
from inside the document, where they are defined as
document-profile.document-characteristics.document-architecture-class
document-profile.document-characteristics.document-application-
profile
Gateways are NOT required to do this, since the document-
characteristics are optional parameters. If a gateway does not, it
simply uses the defaulting rules defined above.
The OBJECT IDENTIFIERs for the document application profile and for
ODA {2 8 0 0} must be added to the Encoded Information Types
parameter of the message envelope.
2. Security Considerations
ODA body parts have the natural propensity of complex structures that
it is hard to find out what the parts are capable of.
Moreover, ODA is an extensible architecture, where new content
portions may be added at any time, so that the threats posed by this
body part may change over time.
However, no security risks related to ODA are known at this time.
3. References
[MIME]
Freed, N., and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose
Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message
Bodies", RFC2045, November 1996.
[T.411]
CCITT Recommendation T.411 (1988), Open Document Architecture
(ODA) and Interchange Format, Introduction and General
Principles.
4. Author"s Address
Harald Tveit Alvestrand
UNINETT
Postboks 6883 Elgeseter
N-7002 TRONDHEIM
Phone: +47 73 59 70 94
EMail: Harald.T.Alvestrand@uninett.no
5. Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved.
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