Subject: ExtendedPartialResponse and Search

From: "Kurt D. Zeilenga" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 1999 14:28:10 -0800

I suggest we allow ExtendedPartialResponses to be returned in
response to any Request (excepting abandon and unbind).

A control should be allowed to extend an operation in a way
that allows multiple responses.  For example, we should allow a
delete subtree control upon delete to return multiple
responses, say to provide continuation references, might
be quite useful.

One could argue that in such cases search or extended operations
should be used (as these allow multiple responses), however,
this may disallow the combination of controls.

I believe allowing all operations (excepting abandon and
unbind) to return extendedPartialResponses would provide
offer a great deal of flexibility to the protocol.

I do not believe backwards compatibility is much of a problem.
Clients which do not understand ExtendedPartialResponses
wouldn't used controls or extended operations which causes
them to be return.  SDKs should support ExtendedPartialResponses.
Such support can be advertised as an optional feature if not
covered by the core specification for the API.  Application
developers should verify that the SDK they use supports the
protocol features they rely on.

	Kurt