Re: Transactions in LDAP

[Ramiro Sarmiento <Ramiro.Sarmiento@eng.Sun.COM>]

-> X-Sender: stokes@popmail1.austin.ibm.com
-> Date: Wed, 03 Sep 1997 07:47:32 -0500
->
-> >>  server-server: replication cases
-> >
-> >Is the idea here to have one server act as a client and the other as
-> >the true server within the context of one transaction? And that the roles
-> >might be reversed on the next transaction?
-> 
-> Yes.  The case is the following:  A set of entries/attributes are updated
-> in the directory server and that modification was handled as a transaction.
-> If that server has replicas, then those updates need to be handled as a
-> transaction during the replication process.  Of course, this can get
-> very complicated quickly when the transaction spanned multiple servers, for
-> example.  We'll just need to work through these cases and probably make
-> some simplifying assumptions where reasonable.
-> 

One possible simplification here is to treat the replication operation
itself as a transaction. If an authoritative server begins a replication
operation with no transactions pending, then the set of updates sent to
the replicas should contain all elements of composite updates since the
last replication op. If the replication fails, all its updates are backed
out. Pretty gross, I know, but it's simple :)

Ramiro Sarmiento
Solaris Directory Services