Universal identifiers: UCA Forum Contribution: Part 1 -- uniIDs.doc

Members of the UNISWG,

This brief document is a contribution by the UCA Forum Customer Interface
Working Group to the discussion on universal identifiers in the "Universal
Node Identifiers System Working Group", UNISWG, in California.  

The document proposes a flexible mechanism for constructing unconstrained
hierarchical identifiers that translate to compact binary form for transfer
via communications, and, a simple printable form for display in barcodes and
labels.  The approach combines two well-known standards - Object Identifiers
from OSI's ASN.1 and Basic Encoding Rules (ISO/IEC 8824/8825) and "Base64"
encoding from InterNIC RFC 2045.  

We recommend that the UNISWG incorporate the adoption of this approach which
has the benefits of flexibility, simplicity, and compactness.  In addition,
there is an existing and reliable registration authority for assigning unique
entity ids.  The proposed approach allows entities to independently and
privately construct guaranteed unique and traceable identifiers without
creation of any new standards or registration authorities.

There are three attachments (sent as three emails):

Part 1: uniIDs.doc (33,792 Bytes)		
     A word document describing the proposal. (Word 6.0/95)

Part 2: idsShort.exe (42,122 Bytes)
     A self extracting archive that additionally contains a visual basic 
     program that implements the ID generation methods.  It is 
     missing the large Microsoft DLLs required (which you may 
     already have). Runs on WIN95.

Part 3: idsLong.exe (1,449,595 Bytes)
     A self extracting archive that additionally contains a visual basic
     program that implements the ID generation methods.  It contains 
     all Microsoft DLLs required and an installation program (and 
     uninstall program). Runs on WIN95.

Dr. Martin ("Marty") Burns, Hypertek, Inc.
Editor, Customer Interface Working Group, UCA Forum
(301)216-9836, burnsmarty@aol.com

UNIIDS.DOC