RFC 2244 (rfc2244) - Page 2 of 68

ACAP -- Application Configuration Access Protocol

RFC 2244                          ACAP                     November 1997


   ACAP is designed to operate well with a client that only has
   intermittent access to an ACAP server.  For this reason, each entry
   has a server maintained modification time so that the client may
   detect changes.  In addition, the client may ask the server for a
   list of entries which have been removed since it last accessed the
   server.

   ACAP presumes that a dataset may be potentially large and/or the
   client's network connection may be slow, and thus offers server
   sorting, selective fetching and change notification for entries
   within a dataset.

   As required for most Internet protocols, security, scalability and
   internationalization were important design goals.

   Given these design goals, an attempt was made to keep ACAP as simple
   as possible.  It is a traditional Internet text based protocol which
   massively simplifies protocol debugging.  It was designed based on
   the successful IMAP [IMAP4] protocol framework, with a few
   refinements.

1.4.     Validation

   By default, any value may be stored in any attribute for which the
   user has appropriate permission and quota.  This rule is necessary to
   allow the addition of new simple dataset classes without
   reconfiguring or upgrading the server.

   In some cases, such as when the value has special meaning to the
   server, it is useful to have the server enforce validation by
   returning the INVALID response code to a STORE command. These cases
   MUST be explicitly identified in the dataset class specification
   which SHOULD include specific fixed rules for validation.  Since a
   given ACAP server may be unaware of any particular dataset class
   specification, clients MUST NOT depend on the presence of enforced
   validation on the server.

1.5.     Definitions


   access control list (ACL)
        A set of identifier, rights pairs associated with an object.  An
        ACL is used to determine which operations a user is permitted to
        perform on that object.  See section 3.5.

   attribute
        A named value within an entry.  See section 3.1.




Newman & Myers              Standards Track