Subject: Protocol: referrals and other URIs

From: "Jim Sermersheim" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 09:06:26 -0700

All,
 
There is the following text regarding referral URIs in the protocol
document:
"Other kinds of URIs may be returned, so long as the operation could be
performed using that protocol."

It's quite likely (actually, it's a reality) that a protocol could
exist which allows some directory operations (like add, modify, and
search), but not others (like modDN).
Even when one considers this language a certain way, two LDAP servers
may not both support the same extended operation.

There is no way a server can know which operations a URI can be applied
to.
There are no forward-looking provisions with which an administrator can
use to convey operation-specific URIs to the server.

I don't think it is within the charter to modify the format of a
referral such that operation-specific knowledge can be built into them.

Thus, I suggest this be dropped or reworded. I can't think of wording
that allows "any URI to be returned, regardless of its protocol's
ability to perform all operations" that wouldn't just remove the need
for the statement. So I suggest dropping it.

Comments?

Jim

---

From: "Mark Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 11:50:54 -0500

Jim Sermersheim wrote on 11/12/2003, 11:06 AM:

 > ...

I am not sure, but one of the original reasons for including the 
statement was probably to ensure some amount of "service integrity" in 
the sense that we do not want URIs to be returned that just won't work 
(because that will be a mess from an interoperability point of view). 
But one could certainly argue that implementations that use non-LDAP 
URIs are unlikely to interoperate in the absence of a clear 
specification.  So dropping the text you want to drop is OK with me, 
given the lack of value it really adds.

-Mark