Re: Netscape Schema publishing violates standards !

[mcs@netscape.com (Mark C Smith)]

These bugs should be fixed in the next release of Directory Server
(4.1), although we will also provide a backwards compatibility mode to
support users who are used to the non-standard behavior of versions 3.0
through 4.0.  We had already noticed and fixed the second problem you
pointed out and I just coded up a fix for the first one.  Thanks for
pointing this out.  Our mistake.

-- 
Mark Smith
Directory Architect / Netscape Communications Corp.
My words are my own, not my employer's.  Got LDAP?



Shiv Shankar Ramakrishnan wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> The schema as published by Netscape dir servers in the subschemaSubentry
> (cn=schema) has the following deviations from the standards (as defined
> in RFC 2252) -
> 
> 1. In the string encoding for an attribute type, the SYNTAX field has to
>    be an oid like 1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.15 but Netscape instead
>    publishes and wants it quoted like '1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.15'.
>    This is wrong according to the BNF grammar for the encoding of an
>    attribute type, as given in RFC 2252.
> 
> 2. Also the SUP field for both attribute types and object classes also
>    is quoted like SUP 'top'. This is also wrong. The legal values for
>    this are oid or anhstring. And anhstring *cannot* have quotes.
> 
> I checked with three other dir servers (IBM v3, ISOCOR GDS, Novell NDS)
> and of them IBM and ISOCOR follow the standards correctly. But Novell
> makes exactly the same mistakes.
> 
> What the implications of this are that you *cannot* update Netscape
> schema using a standards conforming schema ldif file. You have to have a
> slightly different ldif file for Netscape. For that matter the same
> issue arises with code to update the schema also. For all practical
> purposes compatibility *has* been broken because Netscape dir server
> 3.x/4.x have been shipping for a long time. Anyone knows any workarounds
> other than seperate ldif/code?
> Thanks,
> Shiv