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RE: please publish draft-mmeredith-rootdse-vendor-info-01.txt



Mark,
An initial reading of your draft raises lots of questions and concerns.  I
agree that from a client perspective, it would help to know how to behave in
specific situations.  At the same time, a server may want to also know how
to behave when communicating with another server.

It is a sad statement when client applications have to build up a knowledge
base to be able to work in every LDAP Server environment.  This raises the
value of groups like the Directory Interoperability Forum (DIF) - which
Novell and many others are members of.  I went to the last DIF meeting in
San Diego and wasn't fully convinced of their long-term relevance.  However,
I am now convinced that we need such an industry group to solve/document
interoperability issues.

Just think, when we have a directory of LDAP servers, you can quickly
connect to each server and build a profile of the brands that are out there
and maintain a census of brands and versions.  I don't know if this is good
or bad - but when I was a senior at UC Irvine, we had to take a class on the
"Social Impacts of Computing on Society".  This certainly would have been a
discussion topic.

Unfortunately, I don't see any other way for an application to manage its
behavior based on which vendor product it is connected to.  The current
process for LDAP standards has intentionally built a loose protocol that
makes behavior inconsistent between vendors.  This is chaos that most of us
are willing to live with.  Too bad...

-- Alexis

Alexis Bor
Directory Works, Inc.
alexis.bor@directoryworks.com
http://www.directoryworks.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Meredith [mailto:MMEREDIT@novell.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2000 11:21 AM
To: internet-drafts@ietf.org
Cc: ietf-ldapext@netscape.com
Subject: please publish draft-mmeredith-rootdse-vendor-info-01.txt

Please publish - this reflects the changes requested via feed back on
draft-00.

Please review this draft and submit comments.

-Mark

Mark Meredith
Novell Inc
122 E. 1700 S. Provo UT 84606
mark_meredith@novell.com
801-861-2645
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A boat in the harbor is safe,
but that is not what boats are for.
--John A. Shed
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