draft minutes for the LDAPEXT WG

[Mark Wahl <M.Wahl@critical-angle.com>]

Hello,

Below are the draft minutes from the meeting last month in Washington DC.
Please review and let me know of any changes or additions, as they will 
be submitted for the proceedings.

Draft minutes for the LDAPEXT working group 
December 1998

ACTION SUMMARY:
 - chairs: add caching and triggered search to charter,
   issue IETF last calls on dynamic entries and caching drafts,
   and issue WG last calls on updated drafts for referral
   maintenance, language tags and Start TLS when available.

 - Ellen Stokes: produce draft on transactions and update draft
   on access control requirements.

 - Mark Wahl: update drafts on recommended auth. methods and 
   language tags.

 - Tim Howes: update draft on referral maintenance.

 - Jeff Hodges: update draft on Start TLS.

 - Pat Richard: produce draft on signing information control.



1. Agenda review

 Partition management and transactions were proposed for discussion
 as potential additions to the charter.

 Discussion of recommended authentication methods and access 
 control requirements were moved up in the agenda, in case the group
 ran out of time.

 C/Java APIs and Dynamic Attributes drafts were not discussed at the
 meeting.

2. Charter review

2.1. Caching

 As there was a draft already near completion, the use of a ttl 
 attribute for caching was agreed to be added to the charter.
 See item 5 below for more about this caching draft.

 ACTION (chairs): add "caching" to charter. 

2.2. Persistent or triggered search

 There were two proposals made for a design by which an LDAP server 
 could, if requested, asynchronously notify a connected client that 
 entries had been added to the directory.  These proposals are 
 documented in:

  draft-smith-ldap-psearch-00 (Mark Smith et al)
  draft-wahl-ldapv3-trigger-00 (Mark Wahl)
 
 The group discussed whether:
  - this was a different concept than replication,
  - a general event service could be used instead, and
  - it was necessary for the client to have a connection.

 Concensus was reached that this topic should be added to the 
 charter of the working group.
 
 ACTION (chairs): add "persistent or triggered search" to charter.
 
 Discussion of the details of the two proposals should be done on
 the working group mailing list.

2.3. Normalized match

 Jeff Hodges proposed a need for having new matching rules for 
 attributes whose values contain human-readable strings, in 
 particular names.  These rules would allow the server to better
 support comparison of names containing non-ASCII characters. 

 A BOF for a new working group "lessor" was held at the IETF, 
 to develop a framework for registering matching rules to be used
 in application servers which support filtering on string-based 
 attributes.  These would include LDAP servers, as well as IMAP and
 ACAP servers.

 At this meeting, concenus of the group was that this item was not 
 to be added to the charter.

2.4. Partition management

 Russel Weiser proposed the addition of LDAP server partition 
 management to the working group charter.  Partition management
 would include topics such as the moving of whole subtrees of entries 
 between servers, support for backlinks, and the impacts on access 
 control of administrative areas which cross server boundaries.

 At this meeting, concensus of the group was that this item was not 
 to be added to the charter.

2.5. Transactions

 Sanjay Jain proposed the addition of Transactions to the working
 group charter.  Ellen Stokes said that she and others had been
 identifying requirements for transactions in LDAP, and would 
 produce a draft for the group to review.
 
 ACTION (Ellen Stokes): produce draft on transaction requirements.

3. Recommended authentication methods

 The core LDAP protocol document, RFC 2251, includes an IESG note that 
 implementations may not interoperate with a secure authentication
 mechanism as there is no mandatory-to-implement security mechanism 
 provided in the document.

 Mark Wahl described the planned changes to the document 
 draft-ietf-ldapext-authmeth:
  1 Fix error in description of CRAM-MD5 and make it a MANDATORY
    SASL mechanism for implementations
  2 Improve description of TLS certificate-based authentication and
    make EXTERNAL a RECOMMENDED SASL mechanism
  3 Add description of simple (password based) inside of a TLS
    encrypted connection and make it a RECOMMENDED method

 With the publication of an RFC with these statements, it is expected 
 the IESG restriction on the LDAP protocol could be removed.

 This draft references draft-ietf-asid-ldapv3-tls-02 draft for the 
 definition of how TLS is used in LDAP.  That draft can now move 
 forward as TLS has been approved by the IESG.

 ACTION (Mark Wahl): send updated draft on authentication methods
 to the list.
  
4. Dynamic Entries

 Yoram Yaacovi reviewed the recent comments seen on the mailing 
 list regarding draft-ietf-asid-ldapv3-dynamic-07, which has 
 completed working group last call.  These were:
  - whether to use an extended operation or a Modify request
  - whether to have a dynamicObject object class 

 A mapping of the extended operation onto a DAP Modify request 
 could be documented.

 Yoram also noted that he would in the future produce a draft on 
 dynamic non-leaf objects.

 The consensus of the working group meeting was that the document
 should be sent to the IESG to become a Proposed Standard RFC.

 ACTION (chairs): initiate IETF last call on this document.

5. Caching

 The consensus of the working group meeting was that the 
 document draft-ietf-asid-ldap-cache-01, which had completed working
 group last call, should be sent to the IESG to become a Proposed 
 Standard RFC.

 ACTION (chairs): initiate IETF last call on this document.

6. Sorting

 As the author was not present at the meeting, discussion of the 
 sorting document was deferred to the mailing list.

7. Referrals and knowledge maintenance

 Mark Wahl and Tim Howes summarized the document 
 draft-ietf-asid-ldapv3-referral-00 on representing LDAP knowledge
 in the directory. There was a minor error which would need to be
 corrected in a revised draft before it could be sent to the IESG.
 There had also been a request from the mailing list to document the 
 relationship between the LDAP referral knowledge model and the X.500
 knowledge model, and a request at the meeting to be able to indicate
 whether a referral is to a master or shadow copy of data. 

 The consensus of the working group meeting was than an updated 
 draft should become a standards-track RFC.

 ACTION (Tim Howes): produce updated draft,
 ACTION (chairs): initiate working group last call.

8. Use of language tags
  
 Mark Wahl summarized the proposed changes to the document 
 draft-ietf-asid-ldapv3-lang-02, in particular the removal of the
 preferred language indication control.

 The consensus of the working group meeting was that an updated 
 draft should become a standards-track RFC.

 ACTION (Mark Wahl): produce updated draft,
 ACTION (chairs): initiate working group last call.

9. Start TLS

 Jeff Hodges discussed the proposed changes to the document
 draft-ietf-asid-ldapv3-tls-02. 

 The consensus of the working group meeting was than an updated
 draft should become a standards-track RFC.
 
 ACTION (Jeff Hodges): produce updated draft,
 ACTION (chairs): initiate working group last call. 

10. Signed information control

 Pat Richard made a presentation of the proposal for a 
 signed information control, which would allow an LDAP server 
 to return a digital signature associated with an LDAP 
 result.  A document describing this proposal will be 
 produced and circulated to the list.

 ACTION (Pat Richard): send draft to the list.

11. Paging and scrolling

 There are two documents on search result paging and scrolling.
 draft-ietf-asid-ldapv3-simplepaged-01 allows the client to 
 request that the server return search results in pages, but does
 not allow the client to scroll forward and backward in the result
 set.  draft-ietf-ldapext-ldapv3-vlv-00 allows the client to 
 move to arbitrary locations in the result, but requires that the
 server sort results.  Further discussion of these documents will 
 occur on the list.

12. Access control requirements

 Ellen Stokes said that she had received several comments on the
 document draft-stokes-ldapext-acl-reqts-00.

 ACTION (Ellen Stokes): send an updated draft to the list.

The next meeting will be held at the IETF in March 1998.

=========================

Mark Wahl, Enterprise Directory Integration
Critical Angle Inc.