Re: (ITS#6598) EXOP to return number of children of a (sub)tree

[hyc@symas.com]

masarati@aero.polimi.it wrote:
>> quanah@zimbra.com wrote:
>>> Full_Name: Quanah Gibson-Mount
>>> Version: NA
>>> OS: NA
>>> URL: ftp://ftp.openldap.org/incoming/
>>> Submission from: (NULL) (75.111.45.108)
>>>
>>>
>>> It would be extremely useful to have an extended operation that allows
>>> querying
>>> the number of children of a given (sub)tree, so that one can avoid
>>> iterating
>>> through the entire subtree to determine this number.
>>>
>> Might as well ask for the numSubordinates operational attribute to be
>> implemented instead, this doesn't seem to merit a new exop. And for
>> numSubordinates, see the -devel archives for why we chose not to implement
>> it.
>>
>> In either case, the server still needs to iterate over all entries
>> internally,
>> and the result has to take ACLs and entry disclosure into account.
>
> An exop would allow to easily discriminate between intentional and
> "catchall" requests, like "+".  Moreover, it might make sense to
> discriminate at least between subtree and onelevel number of subordinates;
> this would require two distinct operational attributes, or a parameter in
> the exop.
>
> I'm not endorsing either solution, I'm just pointing out possible pros and
> cons.

If you want to be able to distinguish results based on scope then it makes 
more sense to just define a Search control. Like No-op - count the entries 
that would be returned, instead of returning them. (And bypassing the 
sizelimit too, but probably not bypassing timelimit.)

-- 
   -- Howard Chu
   CTO, Symas Corp.           http://www.symas.com
   Director, Highland Sun     http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
   Chief Architect, OpenLDAP  http://www.openldap.org/project/