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RE: Protocol: referrals and other URIs

It is weird, no matter which way you slice it!

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ietf-ldapbis@OpenLDAP.org
[mailto:owner-ietf-ldapbis@OpenLDAP.org]On Behalf Of Howard Chu
Sent: Thursday, 13 November 2003 10:06
To: 'Jim Sermersheim'; ietf-ldapbis@OpenLDAP.org
Subject: RE: Protocol: referrals and other URIs


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ietf-ldapbis@OpenLDAP.org
> [mailto:owner-ietf-ldapbis@OpenLDAP.org]On Behalf Of Jim Sermersheim

> Howard,

> For an implementation to conform to the protocol specification, it must
> understand and correctly implement the specification. If there is
> language that forces a server to do something it cannot do, that's a
> problem.

Certainly. But that's not relevant, since servers don't process referrals,
they merely return them to clients. Whether or not a server implements the
referral scheme is orthogonal to the question.

On the other side, a server that correctly parses LDAP queries and generates
properly formatted replies obviously has correctly implemented the
specification, even if it just returns LDAP_UNWILLING_TO_PERFORM for all
request types. The completeness of an implementation has nothing to do with
the correctness of it.

> If my interpretation is muddy, then the wording needs to change,
> because it is not only me who is interpreting it that way.
>
> Do you have alternate wording which captures the intent of this
> statement while allowing non-LDAP protocols to be specified
> in referral URIs?

Not really, since I haven't really thought about which non-LDAP protocols
might meaningfully be used in a referral. I suppose one could envision an
HTTP server that was operating as an LDAP gateway, but I don't see what an
LDAP client really should do with such a response. Is it the LDAP client's
responsibility to parse these various other protocols and marshal them into a
format that the calling LDAP application understands?

Should it really be so open-ended, or should it just allow other *LDAP*
schemes over as-yet-unknown transports? (e.g. ldapi for LDAP over IPC, cldap
for connectionless LDAP over UDP, perhaps LDAP over a multicast transport,
etc...)

> Jim
>
> >>> <highlandsun@highlandsun.propagation.net> 11/12/03 10:35:23 AM >>>
> >All,
> >
> >There is the following text regarding referral URIs in the protocol
> >document:
> >"Other kinds of URIs may be returned, so long as the operation could
> be
> >performed using that protocol."
> >
> >It's quite likely (actually, it's a reality) that a protocol could
> >exist which allows some directory operations (like add, modify, and
> >search), but not others (like modDN).
> >Even when one considers this language a certain way, two LDAP servers
> >may not both support the same extended operation.

  -- Howard Chu
  Chief Architect, Symas Corp.       Director, Highland Sun
  http://www.symas.com               http://highlandsun.com/hyc
  Symas: Premier OpenSource Development and Support