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Object identifier


In computing, object identifiers or OIDs are an identifier mechanism standardized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and ISO/IEC for naming any object, concept, or "thing" with a globally unambiguous persistent name.

An OID corresponds to a node in the "OID tree" or hierarchy, which is formally defined using the ITU's ASN.1 standard, X.690. The root of the tree contains the following three arcs:

Each node in the tree is represented by a series of integers separated by periods, corresponding to the path from the root through the series of ancestor nodes, to the node. Thus, an OID denoting Intel Corporation appears as follows,

and corresponds to the following path through the OID tree:

A textual representation of the OID paths is also commonly seen; for example,

Each node in the tree is controlled by an assigning authority, which may define child nodes under the node and delegate assigning authority for the child nodes. Continuing with the example, the node numbers under root node "1" are assigned by ISO; the nodes under "1.3.6" are assigned by the US Department of Defense; the nodes under "1.3.6.1.4.1" are assigned by IANA; the nodes under "1.3.6.1.4.1.343" are assigned by Intel Corporation, and so forth.

This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the "relicensing" terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later.


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