sorting results in JLDAP

[Jon Roberts <man@mentata.com>]

I have just begun working with the JLDAP library, and thus far am able 
to connect and search without problem. As someone familiar with the 
Netscape LDAP library, I like many of the changes I'm finding in the 
newer IETF and JLDAP APIs and would like to continue, but...

I noticed the deprecation of the sort() method in the LDAPSearchResults 
class this morning. Are there any examples of sorting search results 
using the Comparable interface?

My understanding is that if I get some search results and would like to 
sort them client side, I would first need to convert them to a 
collection of LDAPEntry instances. Then calling the sort() method on the 
collection would order the entries by dn. Great, but that's actually not 
really something I would likely want. If I instead want to sort by a 
given attribute value, it appears I would have to subclass LDAPEntry and 
override the compareTo() method with my own class/routine that extracts 
and compares the attribute values. Doesn't that pretty much preclude 
defining a sort order at run time?

I would appreciate any guidance on this, whether it be to point me to an 
example, give me a clue about what I'm missing, give me a suggestion on 
how to circumvent the issue, or fill me in on future plans on this 
requirement. I accept that there may be good reasons for the change, but 
 the elimination of effective sorting would be a serious deficiency 
weighing against my effort to migrate to the otherwise advantageous 
Novell library.

Jon Roberts
www.mentata.com