4:27 p.m.
Dunno if there's already anything like this, I haven't bothered to search yet.
I was considering adding the progress meter to ldapadd. Then it was suggested
that it might be useful for slapcat/ldapsearch as well. For ldapsearch we
would need a means to tell the client how large the result set is expected to
be. Currently it's easy for back-bdb/hdb to provide this number, because they
just walk through an IDL of candidates where the IDL size is already known. Of
course the real result set size may be smaller due to actual filter evaluation.
This seems to call for a control that we could attach to a search request
"give me an estimate of the result set size and update me every N entries".
The response control would be attached to the first entry and every N entries
after that, with an updated estimate of the total number of results. A control
like this would be particularly useful for administrators using GUIs to browse
a large directory, to give feedback about when they will receive the complete
set of entries, and give an opportunity to decide to abandon the search or
continue.
Comments?
--
-- Howard Chu
CTO, Symas Corp. http://www.symas.com
Director, Highland Sun http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
Chief Architect, OpenLDAP http://www.openldap.org/project/
3:50 a.m.
its kinda kewl idea for ui progress indicators and alike. i'm not sure
about "update me every N entries" part tho. say you have a candidate
list you walk thru on the server side and presumably you wanna let the
client know how many you walked and evaluated against the filter. now
if you have result/s to return you can communicate that by attaching a
control response with that data but if you got no results to return
after you walked N entries/candidates how do you push updated progress
data to the client? from ui progress indicator and user perspective it
would become stale til the next result is sent and that can obviously
happen when you have a very large candidate list and few or no actual
results. did i misunderstood and you have something different in mind?
Howard Chu wrote:
Dunno if there's already anything like this, I haven't
bothered to
search yet.
I was considering adding the progress meter to ldapadd. Then it was
suggested that it might be useful for slapcat/ldapsearch as well. For
ldapsearch we would need a means to tell the client how large the result
set is expected to be. Currently it's easy for back-bdb/hdb to provide
this number, because they just walk through an IDL of candidates where
the IDL size is already known. Of course the real result set size may be
smaller due to actual filter evaluation.
This seems to call for a control that we could attach to a search
request "give me an estimate of the result set size and update me every
N entries". The response control would be attached to the first entry
and every N entries after that, with an updated estimate of the total
number of results. A control like this would be particularly useful for
administrators using GUIs to browse a large directory, to give feedback
about when they will receive the complete set of entries, and give an
opportunity to decide to abandon the search or continue.
Comments?
10:53 a.m.
Anton Bobrov wrote:
its kinda kewl idea for ui progress indicators and alike. i'm not sure
about "update me every N entries" part tho. say you have a candidate
list you walk thru on the server side and presumably you wanna let the
client know how many you walked and evaluated against the filter. now
if you have result/s to return you can communicate that by attaching a
control response with that data but if you got no results to return
after you walked N entries/candidates how do you push updated progress
data to the client? from ui progress indicator and user perspective it
would become stale til the next result is sent and that can obviously
happen when you have a very large candidate list and few or no actual
results. did i misunderstood and you have something different in mind?
Good point. I hadn't really considered that because I assumed filtering the
candidates will take trivial time compared to transmitting the results across
a wire. Instead, how about "update every N candidates" and have the response
attached to an Intermediate message if the Nth candidate doesn't actually get
sent. (Here I'd worry if N is too small, and sending a lot of update messages
in rapid succession.)
Howard Chu wrote:
> Dunno if there's already anything like this, I haven't bothered to
> search yet.
>
> I was considering adding the progress meter to ldapadd. Then it was
> suggested that it might be useful for slapcat/ldapsearch as well. For
> ldapsearch we would need a means to tell the client how large the result
> set is expected to be. Currently it's easy for back-bdb/hdb to provide
> this number, because they just walk through an IDL of candidates where
> the IDL size is already known. Of course the real result set size may be
> smaller due to actual filter evaluation.
>
> This seems to call for a control that we could attach to a search
> request "give me an estimate of the result set size and update me every
> N entries". The response control would be attached to the first entry
> and every N entries after that, with an updated estimate of the total
> number of results. A control like this would be particularly useful for
> administrators using GUIs to browse a large directory, to give feedback
> about when they will receive the complete set of entries, and give an
> opportunity to decide to abandon the search or continue.
>
> Comments?
--
-- Howard Chu
CTO, Symas Corp. http://www.symas.com
Director, Highland Sun http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
Chief Architect, OpenLDAP http://www.openldap.org/project/
4:39 a.m.
Howard Chu wrote:
results across a wire. Instead, how about "update every N
candidates"
and have the response attached to an Intermediate message if the Nth
candidate doesn't actually get sent. (Here I'd worry if N is too small,
and sending a lot of update messages in rapid succession.)
yeah that could be a problem. i guess one other option would be firing
them intermediate messages on timer of sorts with time interval of the
client choosing. doesnt have to a very precise or realtime like timer.
10:19 a.m.
A few comments...
Using only a response control is no good here as 99.99% of the work
might go by without the server producing any response to the client.
Allowing, in addition to a response control, an intermediate response
message, would allow for progress updates when no responses are being
produced. Also, the control should be allowed with result, to
indicate for instance how far the server got before it gave up.
Nothing here should be specific to search operation. Progress is
generally useful.
I think it would be good for the client, in requesting the
information, give some indication of the frequency it wishes to be
updated in (once per second? once per minute? once per hour). This
would only a suggestion. The server must be allowed to return
progress as convenient (and not overly burdensome) for it.
I'd recommend progress be measured using 0 to (2**31)-1 steps. This
allows the server to hide the number of candidates from the client,
and provides sufficient precision for most any application.
Lastly, I think this discussion should be moved to the IETF LDAPext
list for comment from the LDAP standardization community.
-- Kurt
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4 comments
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participants (3)
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Anton Bobrov -
Howard Chu -
Kurt Zeilenga