Re: draft-ietf-ldapext-ldapv3-txn-00.txt

[dboreham@netscape.com (David Boreham)]

Alan Lloyd wrote:

>         The section on Isolation (6.) does not say explicitly that
> resources are locked or not. My comments say that is impossible to
> lock
> resources because of threading and persistence searches and what can
> stop major deadlocks, but on the other hand resource locking is needed
>
> because of my examples mentioned eg Renames. It seems a dilemma to say
>
> the least.
>
>         I did work on multi nodal mainframe systems where resource
> locking was fundamental, but as a fall back we had a deadlock watch
> dog
> arrangement which would knock of "hogging or stalled" applications.
> Such
> features in a directory service could again leave Users in a quandry
> as
> to what state the DIB would be left in if the watchdog fired.
>
>         The point here is that the protocol design is easy for the
> "transaction"- but not having a resource locking process/mechanism or
> philosophy for determining for dealing with it or what constitutes an
> unfriendly transaction that should be dumped - will lead to
> irregulaties
> in the service - to say the least.
>
>         It will be dangerous to say that "during a transaction all
> resources will be locked" and that the transaction could contain a
> persisten search (for example) which relies on another User or another
>
> transation to trigger the completion of the initial transaction.

I see. Here we are in complete agreement. I suspect that
thoughts in the minds of the authors weren't committed
sufficiently clearly to paper.