https://bugs.openldap.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9585
Quanah Gibson-Mount quanah@openldap.org changed:
What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Keywords| |needs_review
--- Comment #1 from Quanah Gibson-Mount quanah@openldap.org --- The terms were discussed when Syncrepl was introduced in 2003 https://openldap.org/conf/odd-sfo-2003/choi.html
They've been standard in LDAP terminology for a while. E.g. Oracle documents fractional replication as well. https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E20295_01/html/821-1220/bcaqk.html
To summarize: fractional and sparse are two types of partial replication. Partial replication is anything that doesn't replicate the complete set of data from the provider.
Fractional means some attributes are excluded. One has to be careful configuring fractional and avoid excluding MUST attributes (or turn off schema checking on consumer). This is configured using the exattr=<attrs> keyword in a consumer config.
Sparse means some entries are excluded. By filtering, DN/scope restrictions, etc in the consumer config.
Just another note: Fractional can also be configured using attrs=<...>. In either case, only a subset of attributes are replicated.
Use case is when replicating different subsets of attributes from different providers.