The ABCs of LDAP: How to Install, Run, and Administer LDAP Services

LDAP Duplication/Replication/Update Protocols (Idup)

The work of this team originally was to address issues on multi-master and master-slave replication, and therefore depended on the work of another Working Group exploring questions of access control. This team, however, failed to reach consensus, and therefore the objective of the Working Group changed. Due to the lack of an access control model, the Working Group decided to release an experimental rather than a standard protocol. The Working Group identified the following issues to be defined:

• LDAPv3 Replication Architecture: This documents a general-purpose LDAPv3 replication architecture, defines key components of this architecture, describes how these key components functionally behave, and describes how these components interact with each other when in various modes of operation.

• LDAPv3 Replication Information Model: Defines the schema and semantics of information used to operate, administer, maintain, and provision replication between LDAPv3 servers. Specifically, this document will contain common schema specifications intended to facilitate interoperable implementations with respect to:

  • Replication agreements

  • Consistency models

  • Replication topologies

  • Managing deleted objects and their states

  • Administration and management

• LDAPv3 Replication Information Transport Protocol: LDAPv3 extended operation and control specifications required to allow LDAPv3 to be used as the transport protocol for information being replicated.

• LDAPv3 Replica Management: Specifications designed to support administration, maintenance, and provisioning of replicas and replication agreements. These specifications may take the form of definitions for LDAPv3 extended operations, controls, and new schema elements.

• LDAPv3 Update Reconciliation Procedures: Procedures for detection and resolution of conflicts between the state of multiple replicas that contain information from the same unit of replication.

• A General Usage Profile of the LDAPv3 Replication Architecture, Information Model, Protocol Extensions, and Update Reconciliation Procedures.

• 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.

The Working Group released RFC3384 "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (version 3) Replication Requirements," which can be found at the Working Group's Web site (http://www.ietf.org/html.char-ters/ldup-charter.html). There is also a mailing list, which you can subscribe to by sending an e-mail to <ietf-ldup-request@imc.org>; be sure to type "Subscribe" in the Subject line of the e-mail.