LDAP SDK for Java

Support for Asynchronous Operations

LDAP allows clients to process multiple concurrent operations over a single connection. This can be useful for clients who wish to share a connection across multiple threads, or who wish to provide support for operations like abandon or the cancel extended operation to interrupt processing of another operation already in progress.

JNDI does not provide any direct support for processing asynchronous operations. It is possible to share a single JNDI context between threads, but it does not expose any API that would allow clients to have more control over asynchronous operation processing. In addition, JNDI does not expose support for either the abandon operation or the cancel extended operation.

The Netscape Directory SDK for Java allows a single connection to be shared across multiple client threads, but it also provides an explicit API for processing asynchronous operations. In this case, the operation must be invoked using a response listener, and that response listener will provide a queue that the client can then poll to determine whether the response has arrived. However, a poll-based mechanism is not always desirable, and it appears to have some shortcomings if the same listener is used to handle responses for multiple asynchronous operations.

Like JNDI and the Netscape SDK, the UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java allows a single connection to be shared across multiple client threads. It also provides additional support for asynchronous operations. However, unlike the Netscape Directory SDK for Java, it accomplishes this using a notification mechanism rather than requiring the client to periodically check to see if the response has been received (however, it is simple for clients to place the results in something like a LinkedBlockingQueue if they would prefer a poll-based approach).