Enhancement to Get Attributes message

["Frindell,Alan" <Alan.Frindell@safenet-inc.com>]

In order for a client to retrieve the full list of attributes for an
object, he must do so in two separate batch requests.  The first request
is the Get Attribute List message to retrieve the list of attribute
names associated with the object, then a separate batch request with the
Get Attributes message with each attribute name listed explicitly.  This
design requires two round trips and extra processing at the client and
the server.  

In addition to having a simpler method to retrieve all attributes of an
object, I can foresee a client wanting to quickly get the list of all
custom attributes (those starting with x- and y-).

I propose adding a tag to the Get Attributes request called Attribute
Selection with five possible values:

0x00  Specified Attributes (requires named list of Attributes)
0x01  All Attributes
0x02  All Client Custom Attributes
0x03  All Server Custom Attributes
0x04  All Custom Attributes

I'm interested in discussing whether the tag should be optional, and if
so what the default value should be.  I think it might be easier to have
'All Attributes' be the default, rather than the named attribute method
already present in the spec.


-Alan Frindell
SafeNet, Inc.
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