Issue with KMIP 1.1 Profiles document

The new asymmetric profiles all call out
RAW as one of the REQUIRED key formats.  This may be a copy-and-paste
carry-over from the symmetric profiles where those keys do in fact have
a RAW format.  The PKCS1 format itself is so raw that you need the
context or an attribute to tell you whether it's a public key or private,
so asserting that one also needs to support asymmetric RAW format keys
begs further definition.  Furthermore, the use cases document shows
no testcase that demonstrates interop with RAW format for asymmetric keys,
so it is doubtful that those companies that need to attest to their support
of the profile can actually point to any evidence of said support for asymmetric
RAW format.  To address this issue, I would suggest either that RAW
format for asymmetric keys is defined (possibly in the protocol spec) and
usage is illustrated in the use cases document, or that the RAW key format
requirement is removed from the profiles document in sections 5.6.2, 5.7.2,
5.8.2, 5.9.2, 5.10.2, 5.16.2, 5.17.2, 5.18.2, 5.19.2, and 5.20.2.

Bruce A Rich

brich at-sign us dot ibm dot com