Re: JLDAP Bug n fixes (ITS#1512)

[Kurt@OpenLDAP.org]

At 06:39 PM 2002-01-07, dfoster@equitytg.com wrote:
>I can certainly agree with your argument about throwing an Exception but
>there are a few things that are preventing me from whole heartedly accepting
>it.  The primary reason is draft-ietf-ldapext-ldap-java-api-17.txt does not
>provide a checked Exception mechanism for (most if not all) of the
>container/wrapper classes (i.e. LDAPAttribute), therefore any Exception that
>gets thrown would be have to be a RuntimeException which would not
>accomplish what you mentioned about an immediate error, additionally the
>error would become intermittent.  That is why I propose creating a
>consistent deterministic behavior pattern for dealing with null values that
>does not break with the ietf draft.

I don't mind breaking the draft, it's a "work in progress".

>I have no problem with treating null as an empty string but what if that
>attribute's value is not a string (.i.e a JPEG photo)?  I think if we treat
>nulls as what they are (no value) the LDAP server will be forced to reject
>an entry if an attribute's value is required.  What do you think?

I would say that this is a good argument for having null be
treated as an exception.

As far as I'm concerned, there are two choices.  Treat null
as empty, treat null as invalid (and throw an exception).
Treating null as anything else or ignoring it is a really
bad idea, and in my opinion, in violation of the draft
(which, of course, could be changed).