Subject: [Ietf-not43] First draft on Relay bags in FIRS

From: shollenbeck at verisign.com (Hollenbeck, Scott)
Date: Thu Aug 14 13:05:16 2003

> I am not aware of any error codes not specified in 2251 nor of any 
> extension mechanism to specify new error codes (There is an exception 
> for API error codes 81-90, but they MUST NOT be returned by a 
> server). 
> Thus I think it is breaking the LDAP protocol to add new 
> error codes for 
> LDAP based services. I may be wrong here, but cannot find any 
> evidence 
> that tells me I am. I think the proposal to use 2, 53 and 51 for the 
> FIRS errors is not overloaded and the clients can  react apropriately 
> without any additional hints. Nevertheless I proposed such additional 
> hints in the errorMessage, which are specified (in 2251) as :
> 
> > The errorMessage field of this construct may, at the 
> server's option,
> > be used to return a string containing a textual, human-readable
> > (terminal control and page formatting characters should be avoided)
> > error diagnostic. As this error diagnostic is not standardized,
> > implementations MUST NOT rely on the values returned.  If the server
> > chooses not to return a textual diagnostic, the 
> errorMessage field of
> > the LDAPResult type MUST contain a zero length string.

Peter,

If the errorMessage is intended to be human readable, how is the language
identified?  The ASN.1 definitions in 2251 don't appear to include a means
for language tagging.  I suppose we could require some sort of identifier as
the first part of the string, but is that a good practice?

-Scott-

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From: Peter.Gietz at daasi.de (Peter Gietz)
Date: Thu Aug 14 13:46:17 2003

> the first part of the string, but is that a good practice?

LDAP errorMessage just an OCTET STRING with no more syntax. I think the 
rfc2251 people didn't think that any other language than english would 
be needed here. This is a field in a complex construct which is part of 
a network protocol. Clients are free to show the contents of this field 
to the user. I don't think we need to go further and specify language 
tags for this. I don't even think we really need to use this field for 
additional information for the FIRS client. I just was saying that if 
the group thinks a FIRS specific error information should be included it 
could be included here. I for one don't think it is needed at all and I 
don't think it is good practice to add additional syntax to such a 
field. So if we at all use it, it should be English only (just as the 
specs are English only), may be just an addition like "(Relay Bag)"

Cheers,

Peter

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