[Ietf-not43] a perspective on LDAP v IRIS.

[Eric A. Hall]

on 8/19/2003 10:34 AM David Blacka wrote:

I don't doubt that you ran into the difficulties you did as a result of
trying to pursue the course you chose.

> You may wish to keep in mind that the RLDAP project was far more 
> heavily focused on reuse than FIRS: it strove to not introduce any new 
> objectclasses, attributes, controls or extended matching rules.

Exactly right. A couple of the problems you encountered would still exist
with FIRS, but for the most part, starting with a different objective
(optimizing the application space accordingly) would have produced some
significantly different result. As you allude to in the text above (and
which would probably have been more helpful as intro text rather than
outro by-the-way), your path doesn't really say much about how well the
FIRS approach would work.

> But when we finished, we realized that if we had to 1) essentially 
> create a custom LDAP server and 2) create custom clients, reusing LDAP
> was losing its appeal.

Yes, FIRS optimizes the client and server. Whether or not this diminishes
the primary benefit depends on how you define the benefit. If your target
was to reuse LDAP browsers, I can see how the evidence would support that
conclusion. On the other hand, if the target is general data-availability
and reuse, then I would argue that the objective was proven once the
assumptions were adjusted.

>  This led us to a philosophy that, ultimately, led to IRIS.

Could you possibly clarify how IRIS addresses either of the targets
described above? I mean, there are a whole lot less clients and servers
out there, so reusing technology isn't a benefit, nor is reusing data.

Perhaps you redefined your objectives along the way? And if so, what are
they now?

-- 
Eric A. Hall                                        http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols          http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/