Re: Transactions in LDAP

["Kurt D. Zeilenga" <Kurt@OpenLDAP.org>]

At 02:30 PM 9/18/00 +0530, Anandi D. Herlekar wrote:
>We are working on implementing transactions in LDAP.

So am I.  :-)

>We are refering to 
>the internet draft 
>draft-zeilenga-ldap-txn-00.txt.

Note that there are no implementations of this I-D yet.
We have much work to do in OpenLDAP before we're ready
to provide transaction support.

>We have following doubts:
>If each beginTransaction is going to return a transaction ID, that 
>will be passed to the following ldap apis, the signatures of the APIs 
>will change. i.e. each ldap API will have a corresponding transaction 
>API.

The I-D describes only protocol extension.  A client could
today implement this extension using the existing API using
ldap_extended_operation() and ldap_*_ext()  calls.  It is
not necessary to provide a higher level "transaction API"
(though one might as such might be nice).

>Now, my basic doubt is, is such multithreading possible in the current 
>LDAP API version?

With appropriate care.

>I guess it must be possible, as the entries are locked.

Threading of the LDAP API is independent of the threading of the
server...

>We need extra information in implementing transaction as we won't be 
>unlocking the entry, untill the transaction is complete.

Clients just need a transaction id to provide with each operation
associated with the transaction.  How the server manages locks
upon entry is a issue for the server...

Kurt