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

[Leslie Daigle]

A brief reply, as I am (really, truly) heading off to the woods
for a few days:

Peter Gietz wrote:
> I included the respective section in accordance to "Considerations for 
> LDAP Extensions" (draft-zeilenga-ldap-ext-04). There are only a few 
> search controls specified in RFCs and it is not too much of a hazle to 
> analyse their interaction with the FIRS relay bag control. The most 
> important that comes into my mind now is Scrolling View Browsing of 
> Search Results 
> (http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ldapext-ldapv3-vlv-09.txt), 
> which would not interfere with the relay bag control. I just didn't have 
> time tosearch for all search controls and make comments with respect to 
> the relay bag control. If people think it is worth while, I will include 
> respective language into the draft, but not in the version 02 I intend 
> to submit to the list tonight.


Is searching published RFCs really the universe of controls?  Is
the expectation in the LDAP development community that controls
are only applicable to particular applications, and therefore
there won't be software written that attempts to emit queries
with controls you intend to disallow?  See next comment:

> 
>>
>> However, this is also one of the reasons that I disbelieve that LDAP
>> is as conveniently-usable a solution to this problem as some believe.
> 
> 
> I don't really understand this argument: only because there are 
> additional features in LDAP that might have a mere theoretical impact to 
> FIRS features, why does this make LDAP a bad choice. The difference 
> between the IRIS and the FIRS approach is that IRIS is more 
> encapsulated, thus being more a protocol of its own than an addition to 
> an existing protocol, which means using IRIS will give you exactly what 
> IRIS specifies, with FIRS you will get what FIRS specifies and 
> additional LDAP features that might or might not be usefull for crisp.


I have no problem with there being LDAP features that are not
useful to CRISP.  I am concerned about LDAP features that *won't*
*work* with CRISP.

Once you've defined the FIRS approach to CRISP as being a very
profiled use of LDAP, it becomes harder to use off-the-shelf clients,
servers and even libraries to build FIRS-compliant software.  Each
of these off-the-shelf-components has its own view on the *generic*
LDAP universe that is going to be inconsistent with FIRS' restrictions.

So, IMO, you are back to writing FIRS-specific clients & servers,
and then I don't see the "convenience of LDAP" argument being
applicable.  (And note that my comment was on that argument,
not (yet :-) the LDAP approach specifically).

Leslie.