A method and system for processing PKCS-attributes and user-defined attributes
in heterogeneous environment is provided. Attributes are registered with a PKCS9
gateway class, and the attributes include user-defined attributes and PKCS-standard
defined attributes. Each of the registered attributes is associatively stored with
an identifier. A method in the PKCS9 gateway class may be called with a parameter
containing an object identifier for an attribute. An attribute mapping data structure
is searched using the object identifier in the received parameter, and in response
to finding a matching object identifier, a class identifier that has been associatively
stored with the matching object identifier is retrieved from the attribute mapping
data structure. A method in the class identified by the class identifier is then
called. The called method may include an operation for construction, attribute
conversion to and from DER-encoding, attribute differentiation, and attribute value
extraction. A class hierarchy of attribute types is based on an abstract class
for all attribute objects with a subclass for undefined attributes and a subclass
for defined attributes. The subclass for defined attributes is further decomposed
into a subclass for each PKCS-defined attribute and a subclass for each user-defined attribute.
