RFC 2244 (rfc2244) - Page 2 of 68
ACAP -- Application Configuration Access Protocol
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
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