JNDI with LDAP

Question

Hi,
I register a listener on a tree in LDAP (Netscape Directory Server) and then
go ahead and modify one of the entries and that fires a NamingEvent to the
listeners. Now when the objectChanged() callback method() on the listener is
invoked, I print out the new and old bindings with the
NamingEvent::getNewBinding() and NamingEvent::getOldBinding().
This is what I get on the weblogic server logs:
NEW BINDING IS: cn=gkhanna222,ou=People: null:null:{adminurl=adminurl:
aaaa, buildingname=buil
dingname: ssss, ou=ou: people, objectclass=objectclass: top, fooobjectclass,
o=o:
promptu.com, cn=cn: gkhanna222}
OLD BINDING IS: cn=gkhanna222,ou=People: null:null
The NamingEvent::getNewBinding() gets all the information but the
NamingEvent::getOldBinding() only prints out the cn and the ou. Why is this
happening? Why does it not print out all the attributes of the entry?
Thanks
Gaurav

Answer 1

RFC 2251 says in the section on the bind operation:
Unlike LDAP v2, the client need not send a Bind Request in the first
PDU of the connection. The client may request any operations and the
server MUST treat these as unauthenticated. If the server requires
that the client bind before browsing or modifying the directory, the
server MAY reject a request other than binding, unbinding or an
extended request with the "operationsError" result.
and then says this in the unbind operation
The function of the Unbind Operation is to terminate a protocol
session.
Upon receipt of an UnbindRequest, a protocol server
may assume that the requesting client has terminated the session and
that all outstanding requests may be discarded, and may close the
connection.
While it seems the purpose of bind is to authenticate, the purpose of unbind is not to "unauthenticate", but to terminate the session.
This would lead me to believe that you could open a connection, make requests, then unbind.
Right now I'm trying to convince the client that the unbind is not necessary since the connection is immediately closed when authentication fails, but so far they are not buying it and insisting that an unbind must be performed which we can't do from JNDI.