INTERNET-DRAFT                                            Michael P. Armijo
                                                      Microsoft Corporation
June 1999
Expires December 1999


                             Tree Delete Control
                    draft-armijo-ldap-treedelete-01.txt


. Status of this Memo


Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups.  Note that
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   Drafts.

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   The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
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   Distribution of this memo is unlimited.  It is filed as <draft-
   armijo-ldap-treedelete-01.txt>, and expires on December 21, 1999.
   Please send comments to the authors.

. Abstract

The purpose of this document is to inform the Internet community of an
LDAP control available in the Windows 2000 Active Directory. This
control will delete an entire subtree of a container entry.  This
control is beneficial in extending the functionality of the LDAP
protocol and may be useful in administration in an LDAP environment.
It is intended that other members of the internet community will be
able to implement this control if desired.


. RFC Key Words

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED",  "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.


. Tree Delete Control

The control is included in the DelRequest message as part of the
controls field of the LDAPMessage.  The controlType is
"1.2.840.113556.1.4.805", the criticality field may be TRUE or FALSE,
and the controlValue field is absent.

This control allows a client to delete an entire subtree.  This can
only be done if the authenticated user has appropriate permissions to
complete the operation.  The server MUST check to see if the
authenticated user has appropriate permissions to delete the
object and all of its descendants.  This control MUST only be used
with a DelRequest message.  A server MUST ignore the control if used
with any other message unless the criticality field is set to True,
in which case the entire operation MUST fail and MUST instead return
the resultCode unsupportedCriticalExtension as per section 4.1.12 of
[RFC 2251].  The server MUST list that it recognizes this control in
the supportedControl attribute in the root DSE.


4.1 Tree Delete Semantics

The tree delete request may be processed as a single atomic transaction
or as a sequence of atomic transactions. In the latter case, all the
client-visible states produced by tree delete are consistent with the
execution of a sequence of normal delete requests.  The server SHOULD
NOT leave process the objects in a manner that could orphan objects.

If a tree delete request fails for any transient reason, it can be
retried and, if the retry runs to a successful conclusion, the result
is the same as if the initial request had succeeded.  The client
SHOULD resubmit the delRequest until the server returns a result code
of success(0).

If a client submits a request to move an object into (or create an
object in) or out of the subtree concurrently with the execution of a
tree delete request, the effect is undefined. The server is NOT required
to lock out such requests.

The server MUST NOT chase referrals stored in the tree.  If information
about referrals is stored in this section of the tree, this pointer
will be deleted.


4.2 Error Messages with this Control

When the Tree Delete Control is invoked, the server MUST check to see
if the authenticated user has appropriate permissions to delete the
object and all of its descendants.  If the user does not have
appropriate permissions, an insufficientAccessRights(50) error SHOULD
be returned.

The server MUST identify all the objects to be deleted before
deletions begin.  If the server has a problem identifying the objects
to delete, the server MAY return an operationsError(1).  The operation
MAY be retried if this error is returned.  If the server is not the
authority for any objects in the selected tree the server SHOULD return
unwillingToPerform(53).

Server implementations may have other restraints on which containers
may or may not use the Tree Delete control.  If you attempt to delete a
container that cannot be deleted due to a platform specific restraint,
the server MUST return the error unwillingToPerform(53).  The Tree
Delete control will not work under these circumstances and the
operation SHOULD NOT be retried on this container.

If the limit to the number of objects that can be deleted in one
operation is reached, the server SHOULD return adminLimitExceeded(11).
Objects processed up to the point of the limit SHOULD be deleted.  The
DelRequest with the Tree Delete Control SHOULD be resubmitted until a
successful response is returned to the server.


. Security Considerations

This document specifies an LDAP control that allows the deletion of
objects from an LDAP server implementation.  Any server implementation
that utilizes this control should provide methods to deny the use of
this control to unauthorized users.


. References

[RFC 2251]
    M. Wahl, T. Howes, S. Kille, "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
    (v3)", RFC 2251, December 1997.  1997.

[RFC 2119]
    Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
        Levels,"
    RFC 2119, Harvard University, March 1997.


. Authors Address

 Michael P. Armijo
 One Microsoft Way
 Redmond, WA
 98052
 USA

 (425)882-8080
 micharm@microsoft.com




Expires December 1999