RE: Submission of Internet Draft - Complex DirectoryLookupusingJ

[Chris Tomlinson <chris@moonvine.org>]

Another concern viz Java is that while it is cross-platform there are
significant issues with embedding a JVM in an LDAP server. Not all platforms
support native threads equally and a multi-threaded LDAP server is going to
have difficulties managing the dispatch from non-java to java uniformly across
all platforms. While I am quite the java supporter, as far as I can see java
doesn't currently represent a sufficiently platform neutral approach to a
standard server-side scripting system.

I would have to agree with Paul LEach here that ECMA script would probably be
more likely to fit the bill of a neutral server-side scripting approach that
could be embedded into LDAP servers.

An arms length approach such as the various java servlet engines could be
easily done but would run afoul of the observation that Thomas Salter made.

As Thomas has pointed out the real problem is defining an filter language that
specifies what needs to be done and otherwise leaves the server free to perform
whatever magic it can to evaluate the filter in the most performance effective
manner.

It might also be reasonable to add the concept of 'stored procedures' in the
LDAP directory that would be essentially canned searches or filters that could
then be called upon from different applications in a consistent manner. This
would be a (small) step to providing for 'business rules' in a directory that
would provide some schema independence to applications.

ciao,
Christine Tomlinson

On 08-Jan-99 Salter, Thomas A wrote:
> The discussion so far has centered around what can or can't be done in Java
> vs. extending the search filter syntax.  I'm not sure this gets to actual
> problem.  If the goal is improving performance of arbitrarily complex
> searches, the Java approach is only a partial solution.  The Java control
> does eliminate protocol overhead, but does nothing to speed up the database
> searches.  The Java code is still issuing standard Ldap searches.  To
> achieve high performance on large databases, the Ldap server and database
> engine need to be involved in optimizing the searches.  This could be
> achieved through an extended search filter.