1 Individual Submission to LDAPExt Working Group R. Harrison
2 Internet Draft Novell, Inc.
3 Document: draft-rharrison-ldap-extpartresp-00.txt October, 1999
4 Category: Proposed Standard
7 Extended Partial Response
8 Protocol Enhancement to LDAP v3
13 This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
14 all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026 [1].
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32 This document describes the ExtendedPartialResponse, an element of
33 LDAP v3 protocol which allows multiple responses to LDAP v3 extended
34 requests. Extended partial responses are backward compatible with
35 the existing LDAP v3 Extended Operation defined in [LDAPv3].
37 2. Conventions used in this document
39 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
40 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in
41 this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
44 3. Motivation for the Extended Partial Response
46 The Extended Operation ([LDAPv3] Section 4.12) was defined in LDAP
47 v3 to allow additional operations to be defined as part of the
48 protocol without requiring a new revision of the protocol.
50 The LDAP v3 Extended Operation allows for a single extended response
51 to each extended request, but this paradigm may not be efficient
52 enough for some directory operations. For instance, the LDAP search
53 operation is a directory operation that is much more efficient when
54 multiple partial responses are used to service a single request. The
56 Harrison Individual Submission û Expires April 14, 2000 1
58 LDAP v3 Extended Partial Response October, 1999
61 extended partial response generalizes the current extended operation
62 definition to give LDAP server implementers the ability to make use
63 of a single-request-multiple-response paradigm for extended LDAP
64 operations that would benefit from it.
66 4. Element of Protocol
68 The ExtendedPartialResponse is defined as
70 ExtendedPartialResponse ::= [APPLICATION 25] SEQUENCE {
71 responseName [0] LDAPOID,
72 response [1] OCTET STRING OPTIONAL }
74 An LDAP server responds to an LDAP v3 ExtendedRequest with zero or
75 more ExtendedPartialResponses followed by one ExtendedResponse. This
76 ensures backward compatibility with existing LDAP extensions which
77 do not make use of the ExtendedPartialResponse. As with all LDAP
78 extensions, LDAP extensions that make use of the
79 ExtendedPartialResponse have predefined syntax and semantics that
80 are defined in RFCs or are private to a particular implementation.
82 5. Security Considerations
84 This draft describes an enhancement to the LDAP v3 protocol
85 [LDAPv3]. All security considerations of [LDAPv3] apply to this
86 draft, however it does not introduce any new security considerations
87 to the LDAP v3 protocol.
92 Wahl, M., Howes, T., and S. Kille, "Lightweight Directory
93 Access Protocol (v3)", RFC 2251, December 1997.
96 Scott Bradner. "Key Words for use in RFCs to Indicate
97 Requirement Levels". RFC 2119.
102 The author would like to acknowledge the readers of the LDAP
103 Extensions working group mail list who responded to the suggestion
104 that a multiple-response paradigm might be useful for LDAP extended
105 requests. Special thanks go to two individuals: David Wilbur who
106 first introduced the idea on the working group list, and Thomas
107 Salter, who succinctly summarized the discussion and suggested the
108 name ExtendedPartialResponse in his summary.
110 8. Author's Addresses
115 Harrison Individual Submission û Expires April 14, 2000 2
117 LDAP v3 Extended Partial Response October, 1999
123 roger_harrison@novell.com
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175 Harrison Individual Submission û Expires April 14, 2000 3