FYI,
Results of SLP (Service Location Protocol) public
interoperability tests in recent years - excellent
brief summary of features that interoperate AND
features that don't included.
Cheers,
- Ira McDonald (consulting architect at Sharp Labs America)
High North
-----Original Message-----
From: Erik Guttman [mailto:Erik.Guttman at germany.sun.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2000 6:09 AM
To: Kashaf Khan
Cc: Erik.Guttman at Sun.COM; srvloc at srvloc.org
Subject: Re: SLP Interoperability Test
> Kashaf Khan wrote:
>> Hi,
> Are the results of the test public?
>> kashaf khan
> BT Laboratories
>kkhan at jungle.bt.co.uk
We've had 4 interoperability tests:
Oct 1996 (Palo Alto, CA)
Sun, ENST Paris, IBM, Linux
DA x x
SA x x x x
UA x x x x
Dec 1996 (Palo Alto, CA)
Sun, Novell, Linux
DA x x x
SA x x x
UA x x x
Jun 1997 (Menlo Park, CA)
Sun, Novell, Linux, Cisco
DA x x x
SA x x x x
UA x x x x
Mar 1998 ('El Nino' Connectathon)
Sun, Axis, IBM
DA x
SA x x x
UA x x
In each case we got the following features
working for all implementations:
1 DA discover (active & passive)
2 Register with DAs (if they have the right scope)
3 Query DAs when present (if they have the right scope)
4 SAs respond to service requests (depending on type,
scope, language and query)
5 DAs respond to service requests correctly, as above
6 Previous responders lists work correctly
We have had limited interoperability for the following other
features:
SLPv1 (Novell and Sun interoperate):
1 Attribute requests (all features)
2 Service Type requests (all features)
SLPv2 (Axis and Sun interoperate):
1 Attribute requests, with & without tag lists, by service
instance & service type
The following features of SLPv1 were never fully interoperable:
1 Character encodings other than ASCII
2 Unscoped DA behavior
3 Use of the 'fresh' bit for reregistration in SLPv1
Other features requiring interoperability testing:
1 SLP authentication
2 SLP extensions
3 Incremental registration with SLPv2 (using the fresh bit)
4 Consistent operation using DHCP for SLP configuration
Features various implementors would like to see dropped from
SLPv2 for moving forward to proposed standard:
1 Simplify query handling requirements
- drop wildcards in queries
- drop typed attributes (support only string types)
- drop support for arbitrary LDAPv3 search filters:
Handle only conjunctions (&(a=b)(c=d)(e=f)) or just (a=b)
Especially: Drop support for '!' (not operator).
2 Drop attribute request 'by type'
More interoperability testing is needed, since there are many
more vendors with SLP supporting products than have participated
in testing and several 'resesarch' implementations which have
been developed at Universities. Moving to draft standard will
require more extensive and formalized interoperability testing.
Erik