1.5 Applicability Statement

The XML data model and XPath 1.0-derived selection language is suitable for use when the implementer desires to retrieve and manipulate data stored in a directory service via an XML-based model. It can be particularly useful with protocols, such as many SOAP-based Web Service protocols, that are intended to operate over data that is represented as an XML document.

There is an implicit assumption in the design of the data model that the directory service exposes semantics similar to that of a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) version 3 directory service [RFC2251]. For example, it assumes that objects in the directory consist of attribute-value pairs in which each attribute can have one or more values. It also assumes that the directory objects can be arranged in a single hierarchical tree structure. The XML data model described in this document might not be suitable for use with directories that do not expose such semantics.