Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-ldapext-cldap-00.txt

[Leif Johansson <leifj@it.su.se>]

> Internet-Drafts@ietf.org wrote:
> > 
> > A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
> > This draft is a work item of the LDAP Extension Working Group of the IETF.
> > 
> >         Title           : Connection-less Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
> >         Author(s)       : L. Johasson, R. Hedberg
> >         Filename        : draft-ietf-ldapext-cldap-00.txt
> >         Pages           : 10
> >         Date            : 31-May-00
> 
> Section 3 says:
> 
>    ... Note that it is
>    possible for a client to issue a modifying request (add, delete,
>    moddn, modify) together with a control or an extended request which
>    modifies the directory such that the response is too large to fit in
>    a datagram which would make it impossible for the client to know if
>    the requested operation was successful or not. For this reason
>    servers implementing this protocol must respond with an error of
>    unwillingToPerform(53) if such a request is received.
> 
> Does the above mean that a server must determine the size of a response
> before it actually carries it out?  That might be tricky to implement.
> 

No, the server can just choose to refuse to serve anything containing a
control in a modifying request or it can implement something that would
"guess" the size of the reply in some way.

> Also, I'd prefer to see a more specific error introduced for this case
> (or just use resultsTooLarge).  An unwillingToPerform error may be
> returned for other reasons, and it would be nice to unambiguously tell
> the client "This can't be done over UDP, please try again over TCP."  In
> fact, I'd like to see the client's recommended behavior with respect to
> error recovery and use of LDAP over TCP (when a CLDAP request fails)
> spelled out in the draft.

Good point, I agree. The recommended client behaviour of fallback to TCP
you indicate is indeed the one we were thinking about and that will need
to be stated more explicitly.


> 
> It would also be valuable to provide a "scope" or "requirements"
> section.  For example, I think a useful CLDAP protocol could omit all of
> the update operations (keeping compare and search).

Yes, why not.

> 
> -- 
> Mark Smith
> Directory Product Development / iPlanet E-Commerce Solutions
> My words are my own, not my employer's.            Got LDAP?
>