RE: I-D ACTION:draft-mmeredit-rootdse-vendor-info-00.txt

[Gil Kirkpatrick <gilk@netpro.com>]

Mark, I think you're right. The supportedFeature attribute can be a separate
draft. I recommend getting the vendor info stuff done and consider the
supportedFeature attr separately.

-g

Gil Kirkpatrick
Director of Engineering
NetPro

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Mark Meredith [SMTP:MMEREDIT@novell.com]
> Sent:	Wednesday, February 02, 2000 10:28 AM
> To:	paulle@Exchange.Microsoft.com; Helmut.Volpers@icn.siemens.de
> Cc:	kurt@boolean.net; ietf-ldapext@netscape.com; mcs@netscape.com;
> pestrong@nortelnetworks.com
> Subject:	Re: I-D ACTION:draft-mmeredit-rootdse-vendor-info-00.txt
> 
> I am getting ready to do the second draft for vendor info.
>  
> In going over all of the responses I have some questions about the
> supportedFeature, and whether or not I should include it in this draft?
>  
> The examples that Helmut asks about at the end: "Supported features: TLS,
> Cram-MD5, schema-publishing, LDAP-ACL, Ldap-replication , etc ??"
>  
> I think that these should be specified in their own specific attributes. I
> am afraid that if something like supportedFeatures were present, it could
> become a catch all for every new proposal, it may even get to the point
> that it would be very hard to sift through the information to find what
> you are looking for?
>  
> So what does everyone think?  Should I just go forward with the vendorName
> and vendorVersion and let the supportedFeatures be a separate draft if at
> all? Or have all three in this draft?
>  
> -Mark
> 
>  
> Mark Meredith
> Novell Inc
> 122 E. 1700 S. Provo UT 84606
> mark_meredith@novell.com <mailto:mark_meredith@novell.com>
> 801-861-2645
> ---------------------
> A boat in the harbor is safe, 
> but that is not what boats are for.
> --John A. Shed
> ---------------------
> 
> >>> Helmut Volpers <Helmut.Volpers@icn.siemens.de> 11/21/99 02:47AM >>>
> Hi,
> 
> > "Paul Leach (Exchange)" schrieb:
> > 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Kurt D. Zeilenga [mailto:kurt@boolean.net]
> > > Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 7:27 AM
> > > To: Mark Smith
> > > Cc: Peter Strong; Paul Leach (Exchange); Mark Meredith; ietf-ldapext
> > 
> > > Subject: Re: I-D ACTION:draft-mmeredit-rootdse-vendor-info-00.txt
> > >
> > >
> > > I'm thinking we just need to define an operational attribute for the
> > 
> > > root DSE:
> > >
> > > supportedFeature
> > >
> > >    The values of this attribute are OBJECT IDENTIFIERs identifying
> > the
> > >    supported optional or vendor-defined features which the
> > > server supports.
> > >
> > >     ( supportedFeatureOID NAME 'supportedFeature'
> > >      SYNTAX 1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.38 USAGE dSAOperation )
> > >
> > > The key is that it lists features directly and eliminates the
> > > need to maintain out of band feature lists for each vendor version.
> > 
> > This sounds fine to me. Having vendor name and version is fine, too,
> > as long as it is _explicitly_ declared that it isn't to be used to
> > discover features.
> 
> I agree that the vendor name (or product name) and version is fine to
> find
> out with which product and which version I interwork etc. We for example
> support 
> RFC 1565 (Network Services Monitoring MIB) where all this information
> is already availible and it will not be a problem to make this
> information
> availible to a ldap-client when it retrieves the Root.
> But I hope we will not encourage client implementors to build there
> clients
> that they derive special features of the product from this information.
> For example: we support schema publishing over ldap but if an
> administrator
> set the access control that  only special users (administrators) can
> read
> the ldapsubschema-subentry then a client have to live without exploring
> the
> schema.
> > 
> > In addition to the above, shouldn't one look at supported controls,
> > and what classes exist, rather than try to categorize everything as a
> > "feature"?
> 
> Can somebody give me a real example for this feature list ? Is it
> something
> like:
> 
> Supported features: TLS, Cram-MD5, schema-publishing, LDAP-ACL,
> Ldap-replication , etc ??
> 
> Bye
> 
> Helmut