Subject: RE: LDAP Client Update: consideration of alternative proposals

From: "Chris Apple" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 20:29:44 -0400

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-masked]

http://www.dsi-consulting.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Apple [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 3:05 PM
To: [email-masked]; 'Kurt D. Zeilenga'; [email-masked]
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-masked]

http://www.dsi-consulting.com

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On
Behalf Of Chris Apple
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 8:25 AM
To: 'Kurt D. Zeilenga'; [email-masked]
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-masked]

http://www.dsi-consulting.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Kurt D. Zeilenga [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2003 11:11 AM
To: [email-masked]
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

---

From: "Kurt D. Zeilenga" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 07:59:40 -0700

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

---

From: "Chris Apple" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 11:42:42 -0400

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.

DSI Consulting, Inc.

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

Kurt

---

From: "Kurt D. Zeilenga" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 10:32:36 -0700

>considered the technical issues relating to its LCUP deliverable.

Thank you for this clarification.

I would like to thank the WG for its consideration of the
technical alternative (draft-zeilenga-ldup-sync) Jong and
I have offered to the WG.

It is our intent to pursue on an individual basis the
publication of our draft as a non-Standard Track RFC.  We
continue to welcome any technical or editorial comment WG
members (or others) might choose to offer.

I also note that not only do we have no objection to the WG
members referencing parts of our document in their future
discussions regarding their deliverable, we have no objection
to the WG borrowing text from our document as the WG deems
appropriate.

Jong and I will likely continue to participate in these
discussions, however, since we are not interested in the
technical approach being taken by the WG, that participation
will likely be limited.

We, of course, reserve the right to raise our concerns
regarding the general suitability of the technical approach
the WG is taken, as well as other comments, at IETF Last Call.

Kurt