RE: How to :

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

At 03:42 AM 2002-01-17, De Leeuw Guy wrote:
>I would like to carry on this discussion with you.
>I have been developing LDAP software client since 1999 and the problems
>encountered are always the same :
>- missing an attribute specifying the number of "children entries??" of
>  its DN (in order to improve the performance in a tree).

A future version of OpenLDAP may provide a "has subordinates" boolean
attribute.  For a number of technical reasons, I don't expect
OpenLDAP to provide a "number of subordinates" attribute.

>- missing a function able to return the attributes of a class.

A client can discover the attributes of an object class using
subschema discover and an then request only these attributes to
be returned.  An extension allowing the client to directly request
the return of attributes allowed by an object class would be nice.
In fact, such an extension is in the works (see HEAD sources).

>- if some attributes are empty, to enable them to inherit the values of the
>  above (parent) class (cases mentioned hereafter)
>  Regarding what we debated recently, don't you think that, in an "object"
>  logic and in certain situations, this functionality speaks for oneself ?

While not having the semantics you describe, there are X.500
collective attributes.  An extension is being considered
by the IETF which specifies their use in LDAP.  I'm working on
an implementation for OpenLDAP (but don't expect it to be released
anytime soon).

Kurt