RE: LDAP Client Update: consideration of alternative proposals

It is my conclusion as a Co-Chair that the WG has thoroughly
considered the technical issues relating to its LCUP deliverable.

The WG has known of draft-zeilenga-ldup-sync since it was
first published. In particular the editors of draft-ldup-lcup
have known of it and considered it during their more recent
revisions of draft-ldup-lcup.

The WG was asked to achieve a consensus on either deferring the
WG Last Call in favor of a detailed comparative study of the two
drafts of alternatives (your proposal), pursuing its chartered
course of action as close to the original schedule as possible
without engaging in that comparative study, or doing something
else altogether different.

The WG was not asked to engage in a formal, detailed comparative
study of the two drafts because they are not charted to do so.
Asking the WG do that would require first asking that the WG
achieve consensus on doing the new work. This is what your
proposal documented, new work. One WG member identified it as
such in his response to your posting. The WG Co-Chairs also
view this proposal as new work. No other WG members have
challenged that position. If there were a significant number of
WG participants expressing the view that this doesn't constitute
new work, John and I would of course be obligated to ask our
ADs to consider allowing us to slip our milestones to accommodate
it.

When John and I requested that the WG Milestone be slipped to
accommodate the process of establishing a consensus on whether
or not to pursue your proposal, Ted added that he'd like to have
showstopper issues raised during this period of discussion as
well.

There was a potential showstopper issue raised by you and echoed
by Jong. I did not see support on the mailing list for the status
of this issue being declared a showstopper to be addressed by the
WG.

The WG has a achieved a consensus that it should not pursue
your proposal of a detailed comparative study of the two drafts.

As a co-chair, I believe that the WG members achieved the consensus
which they did because *they* are of the opinion that the technical
alternative of draft-zeilenga-ldup-sync has been thoroughly considered
by themselves over the past several months.

The WG Last Call for LCUP will proceed on Monday, June 16, 2003.

Chris Apple - Principal Architect

DSI Consulting, Inc.

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.dsi-consulting.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Kurt D. Zeilenga [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2003 11:00 AM
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]; 'John Strassner'; Ted Hardie; [email protected]
Subject: RE: LDAP Client Update: consideration of alternative proposals


Is the opinion of the chairs that the WG has thoroughly considered
the technical alternative (draft-zeilenga-ldup-sync) offered to
the LDUP WG for consideration for its "LDAPv3 Client Update"
deliverable?

Kurt


At 05:29 PM 6/13/2003, Chris Apple wrote:

>Based on an evaluation of the discussion relating to this thread,
>WG Consensus has been established that we should stay with our
>presently chartered course of action. This is reflected as item 4b)
>below. To be more explicit, there is not sufficient support in the
>WG to proceed according to the proposal made by Kurt to evaluate
>both the existing WG deliverable and his individual submission
>as alternatives prior to WG Last Call for LCUP.
>
>We will post the LCUP WG Last Call announcement on Monday, June 16, 2003.
>This WG Last Call announcement will only reference the WG Deliverable.
>
>There are *no* restrictions on referencing parts of Kurt's individual
>submission during the WG Last Call (or any other document) as long as
>those references are intended to provide examples of clarifying text,
>rationale for particular arguments, etc., in support of improving the
>quality of the existing WG LCUP Deliverable.
>
>Discussion about and suggestions/proposals to delay or retract
>the WG Last Call in favor of initiating a technical comparative
>analysis of the two drafts are will be out of scope after the
>WG Last Call posting has been made.
>
>The LCUP WG Last Call posting will be made late in the day US ET
>on Monday, June 16, 2003. Most likely sometime that evening.
>
>Chris Apple - Principal Architect
>
>DSI Consulting, Inc.
>
>mailto:[email protected]
>
>http://www.dsi-consulting.com
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Chris Apple [mailto:[email protected]] 
>Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 3:05 PM
>To: [email protected]; 'Kurt D. Zeilenga'; [email protected]
>Cc: 'John Strassner'
>Subject: RE: LDAP Client Update: consideration of alternative proposals
>
>
>As WG Co-Chair, I want to be clear with WG Members about
>the status of Kurt's request:
>
>1) The WG needs to establish a consensus of support for
>   proceeding as Kurt suggests in order for John and I
>   to endorse it and make any requests for changes to
>   milestone dates or other charter changes to our ADs.
>
>2) It is an open topic for discussion. Specifically, John
>   and I need to see comments (preferably with rationale)
>   about the value (or lack thereof) of proceeding as
>   Kurt suggests. Do not wait for further communication
>   from either John, Kurt, or I to start this discussion.
>   John and I don't want to have to resort to interpreting
>   silence on this issue in one way or another.
>
>   Make your opinions known NOW! This applies to you even
>   if you are an author of one of the drafts covered by
>   Kurt's request.
>
>3) The milestone date for the WG Last Call for the LCUP
>   deliverable is still May 2003 and requires approval
>   of our ADs to slip intentionally.
>
>4) John and I will await confirmation/clarification of our
>   understanding of Kurt's request from Kurt before making
>   the request to our ADs to slip the milestone date to give
>   us enough time to consider whether the WG wishes to:
>
>        a) proceed as Kurt suggests
>        b) stay with our presently chartered course of action,
>           albeit with some slippage
>        c) take another path completely different from those
>
>Chris Apple - Principal Architect
>
>DSI Consulting, Inc.
>
>mailto:[email protected]
>
>http://www.dsi-consulting.com
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
>Behalf Of Chris Apple
>Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 8:25 AM
>To: 'Kurt D. Zeilenga'; [email protected]
>Cc: 'John Strassner'
>Subject: RE: LDAP Client Update: consideration of alternative proposals
>
>
>
>WG Members should review the request Kurt has made.
>
>John and I will respond to the list on the procedure
>we'll use in considering Kurt's request, and if appropriate,
>acting on it.
>
>Kurt,
>
>There are a few major points I'd like to be sure I'm 
>summarizing correctly before John and I respond on the
>procedural issue. You are requesting the following:
>
>1) that the WG formally consider your individual
>   contribution as an alternative to the existing
>   WG deliverable for LDAPv3 Client Update Protocol.
>
>2) that the WG evaluate both documents based on
>   technical merit.
>
>3) that the WG emerge from that evaluation process
>   with a single document that will be processed
>   through a WG Last Call and submitted to the Ads
>   as the WG deliverable for LDAPv3 Client Update
>   Protocol.
>
>4) that the WG Last Call milestone for LCUP be
>   rescheduled further out in time to accommodate
>   the above.
>
>Did I miss any key points in your request?
>
>Do any of them need clarification?
>
>Chris Apple - Principal Architect
>
>DSI Consulting, Inc.
>
>mailto:[email protected]
>
>http://www.dsi-consulting.com
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Kurt D. Zeilenga [mailto:[email protected]] 
>Sent: Monday, May 26, 2003 11:11 AM
>To: [email protected]
>Cc: Chris Apple; John Strassner
>Subject: LDAP Client Update: consideration of alternative proposals
>
>
>The LDUP WG is chartered to deliver:
>  o LDAPv3 Client Update
>        A protocol that enables an LDAP client to
>        synchronize with the content of a directory
>        information tree (DIT) stored by an LDAP server
>        and to be notified about the changes to that
>        content.
>
>Over the last few years, the WG has engineering a technical
>solution for this deliverable.  This solution is specified
>in the I-D draft-ietf-ldup-lcup.  Over the last 9 months or
>so, Jong and I, acting on an individual basis, engineered
>a technical solution for this deliverable.  This solution is
>specified in the I-D draft-zeilenga-ldup-sync. 
>
>Each of these technical solutions are intended to fulfill
>this deliverable.  I also believe both sets of authors
>believe that their approach best fulfills this deliverable.
>It is also likely many members of this WG have formed opinions
>as to which technical solution best fulfills this deliverable.
>However, it is unclear to me whether both I-D, in particular
>the most recent revisions of each, have been thoroughly
>considered by the WG.
>
>WG I-Ds are implicitly viewed as being under WG consideration
>and it hoped that significant number of WG members review the
>I-D as it evolves.  Individual I-Ds are not necessarily viewed
>as being under WG consideration unless submitted to the WG for
>consideration by their authors.  They generally are reviewed by
>few WG members until consideration is specifically requested.
>
>I now submit the draft-zeilenga-ldup-sync to the LDUP WG
>for consideration as a technical solution to its "LDAP Client
>Update" deliverable.  I believe the latest revision,
>draft-zeilenga-ldup-sync-02.txt, is suitable for progression.
>
>I ask the WG to view draft-ietf-ldup-lcup and draft-zeilenga-ldup-sync
>as technical alternatives and give thorough consideration to both.
>It is up to the WG to decide which solution is technically
>superior.  As it is the function of the WG Chairs to manage the
>group process, I defer procedural questions and issues to Chris
>and John.
>
>As the differences between the approaches is fundamental in
>their design, it will be difficult to compare them without some
>basis to which can be measured against.  It may be appropriate
>for the WG to examine what kinds of applications it intends its
>deliverable to be applicable to, what the requirements of these
>applications are, and how each of the technical alternatives
>measures up to these requirements.  The WG should also consider
>broader issues, such as chattiness and security considerations.
>The WG should consider the appropriateness of the design and
>other constraints each places upon implementations.
>
>In regards to the WG milestone:
>
>   May 03    LDAPv3 Client Update Protocol I-D goes
>             to WG Last Call as Proposed Standard 
>
>I would like the WG to defer this WG Last Call until it has
>thoroughly consider both technical alternatives and reached a
>consensus as to which alternative it would like to pursue.
>Then that alternative should be prepared of WG Last Call as
>the WG's "LDAPv3 Client Update Protocol I-D".  I believe it
>necessary to defer the WG Last Call as the WG first needs to
>thoroughly consider both alternatives.
>
>I'd like to say a key design difference which is a major factor
>in I considering draft-zeilenga-ldup-sync technically superior
>to draft-ietf-ldup-lcup.  In attempting to implement
>draft-ietf-ldup-lcup, we found that requires server implementations
>to maintain complete history information in order to provide
>eventually convergent incremental refreshes.  We found that
>where the server only maintains simple state indicators such as
>timestamps, it cannot generally provide eventually convergent
>incremental refreshes.  If the server maintains partial histories,
>the server will be limited in cases where it can provide
>eventually convergent incremental refreshes.  In October 2002,
>the WG consensus was declared on an alternative approach (but
>later recanted).  We implemented this approach and found that it
>allowed all of the above implementation variants to provide
>eventually convergent incremental refreshes.  This was document
>in documented in early revisions of draft-zeilenga-ldup-sync.
>As a result of WG discussions about this approach, it was noted
>that this approach didn't allow servers to take advantage of
>histories they maintained.  In our latest revision, we adopted
>a hybrid approach which allows servers to take advantage of
>histories they maintained.  Hence, I believe draft-zeilenga-ldup-sync
>is technical superior in that it does not place significant
>implementation constraints in order to support eventually
>convergent incremental refreshes while allowing implementations
>take advantage of histories they maintain.  There are, of course,
>many other factors in my consideration and I am quite willing to
>elaborate on these in subsequent discussions.  Before doing so,
>I will await direction from the chairs on how to proceed with
>the consideration of the alternatives.
>
>Comments?
>
>Regards, Kurt