Subject: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-ldapext-ldap-c-api-05.txt

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 18:11:46 -0500

A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
This draft is a work item of the LDAP Extension Working Group of the IETF.

	Title		: The C LDAP Application Program Interface
	Author(s)	: M. Smith, T. Howes, A. Herron, M. Wahl, A. Anantha
	Filename	: draft-ietf-ldapext-ldap-c-api-05.txt
	Pages		: 83
	Date		: 22-Nov-00
	
This document defines a C language application program interface (API)
to the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). This document
replaces the previous definition of this API, defined in RFC 1823,
updating it to include support for features found in version 3 of the
LDAP protocol.  New extended operation functions were added to support
LDAPv3 features such as controls.  In addition, other LDAP API changes
were made to support information hiding and thread safety.
 
The C LDAP API is designed to be powerful, yet simple to use. It defines
compatible synchronous and asynchronous interfaces to LDAP to suit a
wide variety of applications. This document gives a brief overview of
the LDAP model, then an overview of how the API is used by an applica-
tion program to obtain LDAP information.  The API calls are described in
detail, followed by appendices that provide example code demonstrating
use of the API, the namespace consumed by the API, a summary of require-
ments for API extensions, known incompatibilities with RFC 1823, and a
list of changes made since the last revision of this document.

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From: [email-masked] (Mark C Smith)
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 15:48:55 -0500

Some notes about this draft (C LDAP API).  I submitted the -05 revision
mainly because the document had expired and was removed from the I-D
repository a while ago (which makes it hard to discuss the document). 
But there are additional changes that were agreed to during the last
call that I have not yet incorporated.  I apologize.  I plan to make
those edits after the San Diego meeting and submit a -06 revision in
January 2001.  There are also two open issues that need to be addressed,
namely:

1) Some functions in the API do not provide a reliable way for the
caller to detect errors.  Possibly solutions: (1) specify a global LDAP
error reporting mechanism, or (2) modify the calls to return result
codes directly.  The authors of the document plan to work on this issue
and come back to the group with a concrete proposal.

2) Lack of separation between local (API generated) result codes and
ones returned by the LDAP server.  As currently defined, some space is
reserved for APIs within the LDAPv3 result codes.  Some people think
this is a problem, and others do not.  I personally do not think this is
a major flaw.

-- 
Mark Smith
Netscape

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