
Individual Submission to LDAPExt Working Group              R. Harrison
Internet Draft                                             Novell, Inc.
Document: draft-rharrison-ldap-extpartresp-01.txt            June, 2000
Category: Proposed Standard


                       Extended Partial Response
                    Protocol Enhancement to LDAP v3


Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026 [1].

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1. Abstract

   This document describes the ExtendedPartialResponse, an element of
   LDAP v3 protocol which allows multiple responses to LDAP v3 extended
   requests.  Extended partial responses are backward compatible with
   the existing LDAP v3 Extended Operation defined in [LDAPv3].

2. Conventions used in this document

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED",  "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in
   this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].


3. Motivation for the Extended Partial Response

   The Extended Operation ([LDAPv3] Section 4.12) was defined in LDAP
   v3 to allow additional operations to be defined as part of the
   protocol without requiring a new revision of the protocol.

   The LDAP v3 Extended Operation allows for a single extended response
   to each extended request, but this paradigm may not be sufficient
   for some directory operations.  For instance, the LDAP search
   operation is a directory operation that is much more efficient when
   multiple partial responses are used to service a single request. The

                  LDAP v3 Extended Partial Response         June, 2000


   extended partial response generalizes the current extended operation
   definition to give LDAP server implementers the ability to make use
   of a single-request-multiple-response paradigm for extended LDAP
   operations that require it or that would benefit from it.

4. Element of Protocol

   The ExtendedPartialResponse is defined as

   ExtendedPartialResponse ::= [APPLICATION 25] SEQUENCE {
           responseName     [0] LDAPOID OPTIONAL,
           response         [1] OCTET STRING OPTIONAL }

   An LDAP server responds to an LDAP v3 ExtendedRequest with zero or
   more ExtendedPartialResponses followed by one ExtendedResponse. This
   ensures backward compatibility with existing LDAP extensions which
   do not make use of the ExtendedPartialResponse.  As with all LDAP
   extensions, LDAP extensions that make use of the
   ExtendedPartialResponse have predefined syntax and semantics that
   are defined in RFCs or are private to a particular implementation.

5. Security Considerations

   This draft describes an enhancement to the LDAP v3 protocol
   [LDAPv3].  All security considerations of [LDAPv3] apply to this
   draft, however it does not introduce any new security considerations
   to the LDAP v3 protocol.

6. References

    [LDAPv3]
        Wahl, M., Howes, T., and S. Kille, "Lightweight Directory
        Access Protocol (v3)", RFC 2251, December 1997.

   [ReqsKeywords]
        Scott Bradner. "Key Words for use in RFCs to Indicate
        Requirement Levels". RFC 2119.


7. Acknowledgments

   The author would like to acknowledge the readers of the LDAP
   Extensions working group mail list who responded to the suggestion
   that a multiple-response paradigm might be useful for LDAP extended
   requests.  Special thanks go to two individuals: David Wilbur who
   first introduced the idea on the working group list, and Thomas
   Salter, who succinctly summarized the discussion and suggested the
   name ExtendedPartialResponse in his summary.

8. Author's Addresses

   Roger Harrison
   Novell, Inc.

                  LDAP v3 Extended Partial Response         June, 2000


   1800 S. Novell Place
   Provo, UT 84606
   +1 801 861 2642
   roger_harrison@novell.com


Appendix A - Document Revision History

A.1 draft-rharrison-ldap-extPartResp-00.doc

   Initial revision of draft.

A.2 draft-rharrison-ldap-extPartResp-01.doc

   Changed responseName to be optional to align with [LDAPv3]
   definition of ExtendedResponse.

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