Subject: Re: Async operations and automatic referral following in java-api-11

From: "Steven Merrill" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2000 12:25:34 -0600

>>> "Steve Sonntag" <[email-masked]> (Steve Sonntag) 09/07/00 09:16AM >>>

I am puzzled why the draft specifies that automatic referral
following is done only for synchronous operations.  While
it is simple for an application using async  to merge results from 
multiple listeners or to specify the same listener for multiple
requests, it is not so simple to determine when a request
and all its child referral requests are complete.  Why put
this burden on the application?

IMO there is no technical reason that automatic referral
following mechanisms cannot be used across the board,
for both synchronous and asynchronous operations.

Could you fill me in on the reason for the current design.

Thanks

-Steve

---

From: "Kurt D. Zeilenga" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2000 11:52:36 -0700

>for both synchronous and asynchronous operations.

There are security issues which taken into consideration.
Many of the issues were discussed previously on this list
(primarily in regard to the C API, but they apply here as
well).  IMO, chasing of referrals should not be done without
some form of user authorization as chasing exposes information
(even in the anonymous case) about the user.

I also believe the low-level API (async) should have a direct
relationship to protocol data units.  One API call to send a
PDU, one API call to receive a PDU.  Higher level functionality
should be layered, not embedded.

Kurt