Appendix A. Changes Since RFC 2255

A.1. Technical Changes

The following technical changes were made to the contents of the "URL Definition" section:

Revised all of the ABNF to use common productions from [RFC4512].

Replaced references to [RFC2396] with a reference to [RFC3986] (this allows literal IPv6 addresses to be used inside the portion of the URL, and a note was added to remind the reader of this enhancement). Referencing [RFC3986] required changes to the ABNF and text so that productions that are no longer defined by [RFC3986] are not used. For example, is not defined by [RFC3986] so it has been replaced with host [COLON port]. Note that [RFC3986] includes new definitions for the "Reserved" and "Unreserved" sets of characters, and the net result is that the following two additional characters should be percent-encoded when they appear anywhere in the data used to construct an LDAP URL: "[" and "]" (these two characters were first added to the Reserved set by RFC 2732).

Changed the definition of to refer to from [RFC4511]. This allows the use of "*" in the part of the URL. It is believed that existing implementations of RFC 2255 already support this.

Avoided use of (bracketed-string) productions in the , , , and rules.

Changed the ABNF for to group the component with the preceding .

Changed the rule to be an from [RFC4512].

Changed the text about extension types so it references [RFC4520]. Reordered rules to more closely follow the order in which the elements appear in the URL.

"Bindname Extension": removed due to lack of known implementations.

A.2. Editorial Changes

Changed document title to include "LDAP:" prefix.

IESG Note: removed note about lack of satisfactory mandatory authentication mechanisms.

"Status of this Memo" section: updated boilerplate to match current I-D guidelines.

"Abstract" section: separated from introductory material.

"Table of Contents" and "Intellectual Property" sections: added.

"Introduction" section: new section; separated from the Abstract. Changed the text indicate that RFC 2255 is replaced by this document (instead of RFC 1959). Added text to indicate that LDAP URLs are used for references and referrals. Fixed typo (replaced the nonsense phrase "to perform to retrieve" with "used to retrieve"). Added a note to let the reader know that not all of the parameters of the LDAP search operation described in [RFC4511] can be expressed using this format.

"URL Definition" section: removed second copy of grammar and following two paragraphs (editorial error in RFC 2255). Fixed line break within '!' sequence. Reformatted the ABNF to improve readability by aligning comments and adding some blank lines. Replaced "residing in the LDAP server" with "accessible from the LDAP server" in the sentence immediately following the ABNF. Removed the sentence "Individual attrdesc names are as defined for AttributeDescription in [RFC4511]." because [RFC4511]'s is now used directly in the ABNF. Reworded last paragraph to clarify which characters must be percent-encoded. Added text to indicate that LDAP URLs are used for references and referrals. Added text that refers to the ABNF from RFC 4234. Clarified and strengthened the requirements with respect to processing of URLs that contain implemented and not implemented extensions (the approach now closely matches that specified in [RFC4511] for LDAP controls).

"Defaults for Fields of the LDAP URL" section: added; formed by moving text about defaults out of the "URL Definition" section. Replaced direct reference to the attribute name "" with a reference to the special selector "" defined in [RFC4511].

"URL Processing" section: removed.

"Examples" section: Modified examples to use example.com and example.net hostnames. Added missing '?' to the LDAP URL example whose filter contains three null bytes. Removed space after one comma within a DN. Revised the bindname example to use e-bindname. Changed the name of an attribute used in one example from "int" to "four-octet" to avoid potential confusion. Added an example that demonstrates the interaction between DN escaping and URL percent- encoding. Added some examples to show URL equivalence with respect

to the portion of the URL. Used uppercase in some examples to remind the reader that some tokens are case-insensitive.

"Security Considerations" section: Added a note about connection reuse. Added a note about using strong authentication methods for updates. Added a reference to [RFC4513]. Added note that simply opening a connection may violate some users' privacy requirements. Adopted the working group's revised LDAP terminology specification by replacing the word "connection" with "LDAP session" or "LDAP connection" as appropriate.

"Acknowledgements" section: added statement that this document obsoletes RFC 2255. Added Kurt Zeilenga, Jim Sermersheim, and Hallvard Furuseth.

"Normative References" section: renamed from "References" per new RFC guidelines. Changed from [1] style to [RFC4511] style throughout the document. Added references to RFC 4234 and RFC 3629. Updated all RFC 1738 references to point to the appropriate sections within [RFC3986]. Updated the LDAP references to refer to LDAPBis WG documents. Removed the reference to the LDAP Attribute Syntaxes document and added references to the [RFC4513], [RFC4520], and [RFC4510] documents.

"Informative References" section: added.

Header and "Authors' Addresses" sections: added "editor" next to Mark Smith's name. Updated affiliation and contact information.

Copyright: updated the year.

Throughout the document: surrounded the names of all ABNF productions with "<" and ">" where they are used in descriptive text.