Re: draft-zeilenga-ldup-harmful-00.txt

Kurt D. Zeilenga wrote:

> At 07:32 AM 5/6/2003, John McGarvey wrote:
> 
>>IMHO, this draft takes a very extreme position, stated here:
> 
> 
> This draft only reiterates the position which RFC 2251 and
> X.501(93) took, and which LDAPBIS is presently taking.  LDUP
> takes an extreme position that an extension to LDAP can alter
> the LDAP service model in ways which effect implementations
> not supporting the extension.  Such proposals should not be
> treated as extensions, but as NEW protocols.

I disagree. And like John, I also disagree with this text from 
draft-zeilenga-ldup-harmful-00.txt:

   The X.500/LDAP information and service models does not support
   multi-master replication and cannot be altered to support multi-master
   replication without causing great harm.

I do think it would be worthwhile for the LDUP documents to address the 
scenarios you spell out in your -harmful draft. John suggested some 
possible solutions, all of which have likely been used in one or more of 
the existing, widely deployed LDAP implementations that happen to 
support multimaster replication (MMR).

The fact is, there is a lot of demand from customers/deployers for MMR. 
If the IETF does not define anything in this area, then the directory 
community will continue to have no common specification for MMR. And 
that will likely cause great harm to LDAP's future.

-Mark Smith
  Netscape