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h3. Background

The LDAP specification allows the use of attribute options. Attribute options can provide metadata about values for the attribute. Multiple options can be provided for a given attribute/value.

The classic example is language. {{displayName;lang-en}} tells you that this is the English version of displayName. {{displayName;lang-jp}} would be the Japanese version.

{pre}
displayName;lang-en: Hideki Matsui
displayName;lang-jp: 松井秀喜
{pre}

Generally, options behave intuitively. A query without specifying an option should match all relevant attributes (ie: {{displayName}} matches both {{displayName;lang-en}} and {{displayName;lang-jp}}), while a more specific query matches only relevant attributes (so {{displayName;lang-fr}} would not match either of the above examples).

h3. Documents

* [Use Cases|Attribute Options - Use Cases]
* [Proposed Set of Options|Attribute Options - Proposed Set of Options]
* Proposed eduperson Language
* Draft RFC
* Best Practices for Implementation
* Results of Interop Testing of Existing Servers and Client Libraries

h3. References

* [Notes from ACAMP 2012 session|ACAMPScribe2012:Thurs 2.15pm Salon6]
* [RFC 3866|http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3866]: Language Tags and Ranges in the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
* [RFC 4512|http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4512]: Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP): Directory Information Models (see [§2.5|http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4512#section-2.5])
* [RFC 4520|http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4520] (BCP 64): Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Considerations for the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
** As per [§3.5|http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4520#section-3.5], "All other options require Standards Action or Expert Review with Specification Required to be registered."
* [RFC 4522|http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4522]: Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP): The Binary Encoding Option
* [RFC 5646|http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5646]: Tags for Identifying Languages (Best Current Practice)
* [IANA Attribute Description Options Registry|http://www.iana.org/assignments/ldap-parameters/ldap-parameters.xml#ldap-parameters-4]