Re: LDAP Enhancement Style Guide

[Rob Weltman <robw@coscend.com>]

Bruce Greenblatt wrote:
> 
> I have been requested to publish an update of this draft.  So, attached is
> an update of my "LDAP Enhancement Style Guide" internet draft.  Please
> publish it as an update to draft-greenblatt-ldapextstyle-00.txt.  Several
> comments were received on the previous edition, and have been
> incorporated.  Many thanks to those who responded, especially Kurt Z!  Thanks,
> 
> Bruce Greenblatt

  Interesting about control extensibility. My first draft on the proxy auth control didn't include extensibility hooks. It only specified the fields required by the control as conceived. A couple of people suggested that perhaps in the future it could be extended to passing other credential fields, so I changed its value contents to a SEQUENCE in the second revision. Then other people (well-known within LDAPEXT) said no, that's wrong. An extension should result in a new control, rather than additional fields in an existing control. So a subsequent revision reverted to just specifying a single non-extensible credentials field.

  Your draft says:

"The definition of a control SHOULD be defined in such a manner that 
it is extensible.  For extensibility, extra binary fields SHOULD be 
built into the definition.  In ASN.1, use of a SEQUENCE is helpful."

  Has there been a change in the opinion generally among the LDAP luminaries on extensibility in controls, or are the opinions strongly divergent?

Rob


> 
> ==============================================
> Bruce Greenblatt, Ph. D.
> Directory Tools and Application Services, Inc.
> http://www.directory-applications.com
> 
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