Subject: I-D ACTION:draft-lloyd-ldap-list-read-00.txt

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1998 09:56:25 -0400

A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.

	Title		: List and Read Operations: LDAP-X.500 Alignment
	Author(s)	: A. Lloyd
	Filename	: draft-lloyd-ldap-list-read-00.txt
	Pages		: 5
	Date		: 21-Sep-98
	
LDAP was originally developed as a lightweight protocol but through its
development it has added many features to a point where there is very
little difference in terms of simplicity or code size to that of DAP.
However, DAP included features which provided efficient navigation
through a multi server distributed directory systems (List), efficient
retreival (Read)and the ability to provide service controls to select
operation requestpriority, permit/deny chained operations and the
ability to select master/replica data in the operation response.
 
LDAP is now widely used as the access for X.500 distributed directory
systems, however LDAP in its original form omitted the items (List, Read
and Service Controls) as defined above.
The List/Read requirements were serviced by LDAP through the use of
'pre-selected' Search operations. The Service Controls as per X.511
for distributed operation control have in most part been omitted from
LDAP. (These are the subject of another proposal.)
 
Experience in the field is showing that not having a List (and to a
lesser degree, Read) operations in LDAP accessing to distributed
directory system causes very inefficient multi server
navigation compared to that of an LDAP Search being used. A Search
operation is the most complicated of directory services, yet in the LDAP
case it is being used for lesser and more efficient functions.

For instance, in the LDAP only multi - server environments, not having
a List operation causes considerable  client re processing and protocol
exchanges due to dealing with system referrals. This leads to extended
user/client response times. For those who have already implemented a
LDAP Search operation a Read and List should be of little consequence.
 
This document defines two additional operations for LDAP namely List
and Read that extend the LDAPv3 [LDAP] operations to provide a simple
navigation/browsing and information retrieval mechanism by which a
LDAP client can be more effective in dealing with a distributed
directory system.
 
In addition, the operations proposed provide major step in the
alignment of LDAP and DAP and their use of X.500. This will permit
functional consistency to be achieved in directory enabled applications
that use LDAP for access to X.500 systems. 
 
In order to distinguish this functionality from LDAP V3 capable systems,
an upgrade to LDAP V4 is also proposed.

The key words 'MUST', 'MUST NOT', 'REQUIRED', 'SHALL', 'SHALL NOT',
'SHOULD', 'SHOULD NOT', 'RECOMMENDED',  and 'MAY' in this document are
to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [KEYWORDS].

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