LDAP Observation

[Colin Robbins <Colin.Robbins@nexor.co.uk>]

Alan,

I would like to offer the following (meaningless) observation in relation to
your comment about LDAP getting bigger and bigger...

This is not meant to be a serious comment, as I am certainly not intending
to re-open (yet again) the X.500/LDAP comparisons, but it did strike me as
interesting, and something to share on a cold, wet Friday afternoon!

Today, we have approx 10 RFCs related to LDAP.
We also have at least 25 IDs relating to proposed extensions.
There are also 10 or so other related IDs.
A quick survey of these, suggest an average size of 12 pages.
So in total, we have approx 540 pages of standard and proposed standards
related to LDAP.
This is being added to all the time.

Purely for comparison reasons, I observed that the eight documents making up
X.500(93) totals just less than 400 pages.
I.e., The LDAP paperweight is already one third bigger!

Interesting thought for the weekend:  Is X.500 a lightweight variation of
LDAP!

No flames or prolonged discussion please, this message is just meant to be a
bit of harmless fun, in reality these statistics are totally meaningless!

Colin


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan Lloyd [mailto:Alan.Lloyd@OpenDirectory.com.au]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 30, 1998 10:56 PM
> To: 'Erik Skovgaard '; 'Tim Howes '
> Cc: 'Chris Newman '; 'Jonathan Trostle '; 'IETF LDAP Extensions WG '
> Subject: RE: draft minutes from Chicago meeting
>
[ ... ]
>
> Sorry to me again. I dont believe in fixing one problem at a time.
> Becuase one ends up in a mess. I believe in designing systems that to
> the best of my ability dont have problems.
>
> I think that what is happening is the LDAP has now made the clients
> bigger than DSAs and with more and more options going in them
> particularly for security - incompatability and pain will be common
> place.
>
> My belief is that a solution to a problem creates more
> problems, then it
> is not a solution.
>
> As you can see LDAP is now creating more and more problems. Perhaps we
> should review the design approach.
>