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Re: The 'any' attribute type
At 07:47 PM 8/26/99 -0500, Mark Wahl wrote:
>Fourth,
>
>What does a client do with foo;lang-ja when it does not know foo? I don't
>see the value of an option that allows a client to be sent some subset of the
>attributes that is neither what it asked for nor a subtype of that. We
already
>have a way of asking for all information. This control is basically the same
>as asking for all attributes whose attribute types have a 'k' in them: the
>client might get some information that it expected. This sort of processing
>would seem to be best left up to the client.
>
Mark,
I have to disagree with you on this point. There is a definite need for
this type of feature. The typical scenario that I use comes from a real
scenario (OfficeVision anyone). Consider an LDAP server that is being used
as the back end for an address book application. Assume that it is
installed at a location in Switzerland. This same server is likely to have
some users that want their information in French, some that want it in
German, some that want it in Italian, and maybe even some that want it in
Swiss or English... There is currently no way to make use of the language
tags for this purpose. I see this as being completely different from
"asking for all attributes whose attribute types have a 'k' in them". From
my perspective it would be very cumbersome for the client to have to get
back all of the attributes in every language, sort through them (in random
order for each entry) and then display them. Since the server has already
tagged the attributes with the language tag, I think that it makes
substantially more sense to ask the LDAP server to make use of the
information that it has already tagged. I also think that such a feature
would make the sort control substantially more useful.
That said, I'm not too keen on the OID thing that Jim proposed. Mark's
arguments are very persuasive. What was the rationale that my "*;jp"
proposal got shot down. I can't remember what it was, and my slow link
from home prevents my from searching the archive. If this doesn't work,
some company (Novell maybe) could always define an OID under their branch
in the tree to mean the same thing that Jim proposed 1.1.1 to be.
Bruce
>Mark Wahl, Directory Product Architect
>Innosoft International, Inc.
>
>
>
==============================================
Bruce Greenblatt, Ph. D.
Directory Tools and Application Services, Inc.
http://www.directory-applications.com