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

[Peter Gietz]

Hollenbeck, Scott wrote:

>>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-

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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