Re: "connections" (Was: protocol-22 comments)

["Kurt D. Zeilenga" <Kurt@OpenLDAP.org>]

At 02:50 PM 4/17/2004, Hallvard B Furuseth wrote:
>(BTW, I'm not sure if it would be
>right to say SASL and TLS are part of the LDAP protocol or not?) 

LDAP TS not only defines exchange of LDAP messages, but how
those messages are mapped onto the transport layer protocol,
and this may include processing of those messages through
SASL and/or TLS layers.  These layers may be independently
specified, but they are an integral part of LDAP's mapping
onto the transport protocol.

I note that used "stream" in this manner:
 From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:
  stream
          1. <communications> An {abstraction} referring to any flow of
          data from a source (or sender, producer) to a single sink (or
          receiver, consumer).  A stream usually flows through a channel
          of some kind, as opposed to {packet}s which may be addressed
          and routed independently, possibly to multiple recipients.
          Streams usually require some mechanism for establishing a
          channel or a "{connection}" between the sender and receiver.

While I agree that "stream" could apply at the LDAP message level
as well, I think it better fits the transport protocol.  TCP is
often called a "stream-oriented protocol".  (Note that "channel"
might be used in some fashion here, but it might be better to
steer clear of it.)

I dislike the over use of layer and hence only used it when
referring to optional layers in the abbreviated stack.

Kurt