Re: Partially suppported supportedControl/supportedExtension

[Michael Ströder <michael@stroeder.com>]

Alexey Melnikov wrote:
> Kurt D. Zeilenga wrote:
>
> > I would argue that advertisement implies the server
> > recognizes and understands the control (that is,
> > it is 'supported') BUT that the advertisement
> > doesn't necessarily imply that any particular
> > operation extended by the control is serviceable.
> > However, if not serviceable (for whatever reason),
> > the server should return a service error, such as
> > unwillingToPerform, not unavailableCriticalExtension.
>
> Another question that follows: does this give the client enough 
> information to gracefully handle the error?

I think it does not give any information.

> I.e. can the client assume that the unwillingToPerform error means that 
> the client should retry the operation without the control and it may 
> then succeed?

No, the client can't. IMO unavailableCriticalExtension is the more 
appropriate error code to be returned to give the the client a vague chance 
to detect that something is wrong with an extended control.

unwillingToPerform as the dummy error code for nearly everything is not 
helpful at all.

> If RootDSE hasn't advertised support for the control, the client 
> wouldn't have tried to use it in the first place.

That's a really bad situation. It means that everything still is matter of 
proprietary local client configuration which makes LDAP client 
implementation and deployment harder.

Ciao, Michael.