One document matched: draft-zeilenga-ldap-features-00.txt

INTERNET-DRAFT                                      Kurt D. Zeilenga
Intended Category: Standard Track                   OpenLDAP Foundation
Expires: 3 October 2001                             3 April 2001


                        Feature Discovery in LDAP
                  <draft-zeilenga-ldap-features-00.txt>


0. Status of this Memo

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

  This document is intended to be, after appropriate review and
  revision, submitted to the RFC Editor as an Standard Track document.
  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.  Technical discussion of this
  document will take place on the IETF LDAP Extension Working Group
  mailing list <ietf-ldapext@netscape.com>.  Please send editorial
  comments directly to the author <Kurt@OpenLDAP.org>.

  Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task
  Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups.  Note that other
  groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts.
  Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
  and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
  time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
  material or to cite them other than as ``work in progress.''

  The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
  <http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt>. The list of
  Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
  <http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html>.

  Copyright 2001, The Internet Society.  All Rights Reserved.

  Please see the Copyright section near the end of this document for
  more information.


1. Overview

  LDAP [RFC2251] is an extensible protocol with numerous elective
  features.  LDAP provides specific mechanisms for a client to discover
  supported protocol versions, control, extended operations, and SASL
  mechanisms.  However, these mechanisms are not designed to support
  general feature discovery.  This document details a simple supported
  feature discovery mechanism.



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  The key words ``MUST'', ``MUST NOT'', ``REQUIRED'', ``SHALL'', ``SHALL
  NOT'', ``SHOULD'', ``SHOULD NOT'', ``RECOMMENDED'',  and ``MAY'' in
  this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119
  [RFC2119].


2. Discovery of supported features

  This document describes a simple, general-purpose mechanism which
  clients may use to discovery the set of features supported by a
  server.

  Each feature whose support may be discovered SHALL be identified by an
  Object Identifier (OID).  A server advertises its support for a given
  feature by providng the Object Identifier associated with the feature
  as a value of the supportedFeatures attribute held in the root DSE.  A
  client may examine the values of this attribute to determine if a
  particular feature is supported by the server.

  The supportedFeatures attribute type is described [RFC2252] as
  follows:

       ( OID.TBD NAME 'supportedFeatures'
         SYNTAX 1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.38
         USAGE dSAOperation )


3. Security Considerations

  As features of a server may be discovered by other means (such as
  trial and error) by rogue clients; this feature discovery mechanism is
  not believed to introduce any new security risk to LDAP.


4. Acknowledgment

  This document is based upon input from the IETF LDAPext working group.


5. Author's Address

  Kurt D. Zeilenga
  OpenLDAP Foundation
  <Kurt@OpenLDAP.org>


6. Bibliography




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  [RFC2219] S. Bradner, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
            Requirement Levels", RFC 2119, March 1997.

  [RFC2251] M. Wahl, T. Howes, S. Kille, "Lightweight Directory Access
            Protocol (v3)", RFC 2251, December 1997.

  [RFC2252] M. Wahl, A. Coulbeck, T. Howes, S. Kille, "Lightweight
            Directory Access Protocol (v3):  Attribute Syntax Definitions",
            RFC 2252, December 1997.


7. Full Copyright

  Copyright 2001, The Internet Society.  All Rights Reserved.

  This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished
  to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain
  it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
  and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
  kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph
  are included on all such copies and derivative works.  However,
  this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by
  removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society
  or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the  purpose
  of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
  copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
  followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
  English.

  The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not
  be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.

  This document and the information contained herein is provided on
  an "AS IS" basis and THE AUTHORS, THE INTERNET SOCIETY, AND THE
  INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS
  OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE
  OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY
  IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
  PURPOSE.












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