OtherInfo Categories

Issue raised by: David Loy 19 Jun 1996

What are the intended or adopted values for categoryValue of otherInfo. What OIDs for CategoryTypeId have been assigned? Is the assumption that standard values will be assigned to associate the content with its type? Is it intended that categoryTypeId indicate a broad semantic category?

OtherInfo is defined as follows:

 
SEQUENCE OF SEQUENCE{
      category            [1]   IMPLICIT InfoCategory OPTIONAL, 
      information        CHOICE{
          characterInfo           [2]  IMPLICIT InternationalString,
           binaryInfo             [3]  IMPLICIT OCTET STRING,
           externallyDefinedInfo  [4]  IMPLICIT EXTERNAL,
        oid                       [5]  IMPLICIT OBJECT IDENTIFIER}}
  --
    InfoCategory ::= SEQUENCE{
        categoryTypeId   [1]   IMPLICIT OBJECT IDENTIFIER OPTIONAL,
        categoryValue    [2]   IMPLICIT INTEGER}

When OtherInfo was developed the intent was to make it as flexible as possible, since the scope of its usage wasn't entirely clear at the time. It was anticipated that "categories" would be useful, but to date, there are no values for categoryValue that have been "adopted", and none (known) in use, nor are there any categories (known) in use. The category itself is optional, and if used, categoryTypeId is optional. So you can have:

1. no category at all,
2. a category without qualification, or
3. a category with qualification.

(1) may very well be used predominantly. (2) would be used between partners who have an a priori agreement. For (3), the intention was that categoryTypeId would just identify some registration agent. It was not intended as a classification mechanism.