3.1 Abstract Data Model

This section describes a conceptual model of possible data organization that an implementation maintains to participate in this protocol. The described organization is provided to facilitate the explanation of how the protocol behaves. This document does not mandate that implementations adhere to this model as long as their external behavior is consistent with that described in this document.

Collaboration clients use an ILS Server (LDAP dynamic object store) to store and retrieve information about other potential collaboration partners. ILS provides a client/server mechanism with which online users can locate each other and thus allow them to start a collaboration session. The basic idea behind ILS is simple: Two users running compatible communication applications want to communicate. For the two users to start the communication session, they first need to identify each other on the network.

A caller needs a mechanism to identify a public IPv4 address of a collaboration partner. Thus, ILS provides the necessary mechanism to handle the discovery and resolution of the IP addresses. On a more abstract level, ILS acts as a dynamic user directory that provides a rendezvous mechanism for users. This rendezvous mechanism allows users to find each other on a network.

At a database level, the ILS Server stores two main types of objects: rtPerson objects representing the online users, and rtConference objects representing data on available online conferences.