UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java 5.0.0, now available under the Apache License

The UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java is a fast, powerful, user-friendly, and completely free Java library for communicating with LDAP directory servers and performing other LDAP-related processing. We have just released version 5.0.0 of the LDAP SDK, and it is available for download from GitHub and SourceForge, as well as from the Maven Central Repository. The release notes are available online at https://docs.ldap.com/ldap-sdk/docs/release-notes.html.

The most significant change in this new release is that the LDAP SDK is now available under the terms of the Apache License, Version 2.0, which is a very permissive OSI-approved open source license. Although it was already open source under the terms of the GNU GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1, the Apache License imposes fewer restrictions on how you can use the LDAP SDK. You are no longer required to offer to redistribute the source code (even if you want to use a modified version), and there’s no longer any concern about whether you need to keep the LDAP SDK jar file as a separate component. The Apache License is well respected and is often seen as more compatible and easier to use in non-open-source software than the GNU license, so we hope that this will make it easier to use in your applications, whether open source or proprietary. The LDAP SDK is still available for use under the terms of the GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1 (as well as the non-open-source UnboundID LDAP SDK Free Use License), but we recommend that new users consider using it under the Apache License.

Aside from adding the new license, we made several code changes in this release as well. They include:

• The LDAP SDK offers an LDAPConnectionDetailsJSONSpecification class that allows you to define a JSON file with all of the settings needed to create and authenticate individual LDAP connections or connection pools. We’ve updated this class so that it’s now possible to indicate that when establishing a connection that is secured with SSL or StartTLS, the LDAP SDK should automatically trust any certificates signed by an authority in the JVM’s default set of trusted issuers. This was already the default behavior if you didn’t provide your own trust store (or choose to blindly trust all certificates, which isn’t recommended for production use), but it’s now possible to use this option in conjunction with a provided trust store so that it’s possible to trust a certificate either through that trust store or through the JVM’s default set of trusted issuers.

• The KeyStoreKeyManager can be used to obtain a certificate from a key store file if one is needed during TLS negotiation. We have updated this class to provide an option to better validate that the key store can actually be used by this purpose with the settings that you provide. If you use this option and supply the alias of the certificate you wish to use, then the key manager will now verify that the alias exists in the key store, that it’s associated with a private key entry (as opposed to a trusted certificate entry, which only contains the public portion of a certificate and isn’t suitable for use if you need to present that certificate to the peer), and that all of the certificates in the chain are currently within their validity window. If you don’t specify a certificate alias, then the validation will make sure that the key store contains at least one private key entry in which all of the certificates in the chain are within their validity window.

• The TrustStoreTrustManager can be used in the course of determining whether to trust a certificate presented by a peer during TLS negotiation. We have improved performance and concurrency for this trust manager by eliminating unnecessary synchronization that forced interaction with the trust store to be single-threaded.

• We fixed an issue that could interfere with GSSAPI authentication if a JAAS login module configuration was loaded and cached by the JVM before the login attempt. In such cases, the cached configuration could be used instead of the one that was intended.

• The LDAPDebuggerRequestHandler can be used to log detailed information about LDAP requests and responses that pass through an application using the LDAP SDK’s LDAPListener framework (including the in-memory directory server and the ldap-debugger command-line tool). We fixed an issue that could cause messages to be held up in an internal buffer rather than immediately written out as soon as they’re logged. In some cases, this could significantly delay the appearance of these messages or could prevent them from being written out at all if the amount of data to be logged was never enough to fill that internal buffer.

• We added a new JSONAccessLogRequestHandler to the LDAPListener framework. This can log information about requests and responses as JSON objects, which are both human-readable and machine-parseable. While the existing AccessLogRequestHandler produces output that can be parsed programmatically to some extent, it is more optimized for human readability.

• The LDAP SDK offers debugging logging support that can be helpful in diagnosing problems whose cause may not otherwise be readily apparent. Previously, the debug messages were logged in a form that was primarily intended to be human-readable rather than machine-parseable. They are now written in a JSON format that is both human-readable and machine-parseable.

• The manage-certificates command-line tool provides a utility for interacting with certificate key and trust stores in the Java JKS format or the standard PKCS#12 format. When displaying detailed information about certificates in a key or trust store, the tool may not have been able to properly decode public key information for certificates with 384-bit elliptic curve public keys, and it also may not have been able to properly decode a subject alternative names extension that included one or more directoryName values. While it was still possible to display most of the information about the affected certificates, the updated version can now provide the full details about those elements.

• The Ping Identity Directory Server includes a collect-support-data utility that can be used to gather a variety of information from a server installation that can be very useful for troubleshooting problems, tuning performance and scalability, and better understanding the environment in which the server is running. Previously, this utility could only be invoked by logging into the system on which the server instance is running and running the command-line tool. We have now added a couple of additional mechanisms for running the utility. It can now be invoked via an administrative task (either as an individual event that is requested by a remote client or as a recurring task that runs on a regular basis) that will create the resulting support data archive in a specified location on the system (which may be a shared filesystem for easier exfiltration). It can also be invoked via an extended operation that will run the tool and stream its output and the resulting support data archive back to the client in the form of intermediate response messages. Further, although the logic for actually collecting all of this support information remains in the server, we have added the collect-support-data command-line tool to the LDAP SDK so that it is easier to invoke the tool against a remote server without needing to install the server software on the client system.

• The Ping Identity Directory Server provides a monitor backend that authorized clients can use to obtain a wealth of useful information about the state of the server, and the LDAP SDK includes support for retri...

UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java 4.0.14

We have just released version 4.0.14 of the UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java. It is available for download from the releases page of our GitHub repository (https://github.com/pingidentity/ldapsdk/releases), from the Files page of our SourceForge repository (https://sourceforge.net/projects/ldap-sdk/files/), and from the Maven Central Repository (https://search.maven.org/search?q=g:com.unboundid%20AND%20a:unboundid-ldapsdk&core=gav).

The LDAP SDK release notes are available at https://docs.ldap.com/ldap-sdk/docs/release-notes.html, but the changes included in this release are as follows:

• Fixed an issue in which LDAP URLs with consecutive percent-encoded bytes were not decoded correctly.

• Fixed an issue that could cause the LDAP SDK to incorrectly handle data read from a server when the communication was protected with SASL integrity or confidentiality. Thanks to Boris Danilovich for reporting the problem and identifying the cause.

• Fixed an issue that prevented the searchrate tool from running if neither a base DN pattern nor an LDAP URL pattern was provided.

• Improved the logic that the LDAP SDK used when selecting the cipher suites to use when establishing a TLS-secured connection. Weaker suites are disabled, and the enabled suites are prioritized so that those offering forward secrecy and stronger encryption are preferred.

• Added a new FullLDAPInterface that extends LDAPInterface and adds support for close, bind, and processExtendedOperation methods. The existing LDAPConnection, AbstractConnectionPool, and InMemoryDirectoryServer classes have been updated to implement this interface.

• Added a new non-final MockableLDAPConnection class that makes it easier to mock an LDAPConnection instance. It implements FullLDAPInterface and wraps a provided LDAPConnection. If you create a MockableLDAPConnection subclass, then you may override any of the FullLDAPInterface methods to provide whatever logic you desire for them. Any non-overridden methods will invoke the corresponding method on the provided LDAPConnection instance.

• Fixed a minor typo in the ldapsearch usage information

UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java 4.0.13

We have just released version 4.0.13 of the UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java. It is available for download from the releases page of our GitHub repository (https://github.com/pingidentity/ldapsdk/releases), from the Files page of our SourceForge repository (https://sourceforge.net/projects/ldap-sdk/files/), and from the Maven Central Repository (https://search.maven.org/search?q=g:com.unboundid%20AND%20a:unboundid-ldapsdk&core=gav).

This is a minor update that is primarily intended to serve the upcoming Ping Identity Directory Server 8.0.0.0 release. The LDAP SDK release notes are available online at https://docs.ldap.com/ldap-sdk/docs/release-notes.html, but the changes included in this release are as follows:

• Added support for debugging connection pool interactions, including checking out and releasing connections, as well as establishing and closing connections for use in the pool.

• Fixed an issue in the prompt trust manager that could cause it to incorrectly display a warning for some certificates with a basic constraints extension that included the optional path length constraint.

• Updated the manage-certificates check-certificate-usability command to add an additional check to see whether the certificate at the root of the chain is found in the JVM’s default set of trusted issuer certificates. If it is not found, the tool will display a notice, but it will still complete with a success result.

• Fixed an issue in manage-certificates that could prevent it from correctly showing the key agreement usage when displaying verbose information about a certificate with the key usage extension.

• Fixed an issue that could prevent properly decoding an authority key identifier extension that included the optional authorityCertIssuer element in an X.509 certificate.

• Made the ManageCertificates.readCertificatesFromFile method public so that it can be used outside of the LDAP SDK. This method can be used to read a set of PEM-encoded or DER-encoded X.509 certificates from a specified file.

• Made the ManageCertificates.readCertificateSigningRequestFromFile method so that it can be used outside of the LDAP SDK. This method can be used to read a PEM-encoded or DER-encoded PKCS #10 certificate signing request from a file.

• Updated the passphrase-encrypted output stream to provide an option to override the default key factory iteration count.

• Updated support for the exec task to add an option to specify the path to use as the current working directory when invoking the specified command. Previously, the server would always use the server instance root directory, and that will still be the default if no alternate working directory is specified.

• Added an additional StaticUtils.getEnvironmentVariable method variant that can be used to provide a default value that should be used if the specified environment variable is not set.

• Added an additional StaticUtils.getStackTrace method variant that allows you to limit the number of stack frames to include from code before the call into the LDAP SDK. Also, updated StaticUtils.getExceptionMessage when invoked for a NullPointerException so that it now shows all frames from the LDAP SDK (and anything that the LDAP SDK calls), and up to three frames from the code before the call into the LDAP SDK.

UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java 4.0.12

We have just released version 4.0.12 of the UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java. It is available for download from the releases page of our GitHub repository (https://github.com/pingidentity/ldapsdk/releases), from the Files page of our SourceForge repository (https://sourceforge.net/projects/ldap-sdk/files/), and from the Maven Central Repository (https://search.maven.org/search?q=g:com.unboundid%20AND%20a:unboundid-ldapsdk&core=gav).

The LDAP SDK release notes are available at https://docs.ldap.com/ldap-sdk/docs/release-notes.html, but the changes included in this release are as follows:

• Fixed an issue in the write timeout handler that could prevent it from properly cleaning up a timer task object for a connection if an attempt to establish that connection failed. This regression, which was introduced in the 4.0.11 release, could lead to a gradual increase in memory consumption over time.

• Updated the write timeout handler so that it will now shut down its background thread after all LDAP connections have been closed.

• Fixed an issue with the JVM-default trust manager that could cause it to incorrectly abort TLS negotiation if the server presented only a partial certificate chain, and if the last certificate in that partial chain was not included in the JVM’s default set of trusted issuers but was signed by one of those issuers.

• Corrected the result code used in the LDAPException that is thrown when attempting to parse a malformed schema element. We now use the correct INVALID_ATTRIBUTE_SYNTAX result code instead of the INVALID_DN_SYNTAX result code that had been used by mistake.

• Fixed an issue in the way that the persistence framework constructed LDAP attributes for its internal processing. While it would have properly selected an appropriate matching rule based on the data type of the corresponding Java field when constructing attribute type definitions for inclusion in the server schema, it neglected to use that matching rule for client-side matching involving those attributes, but instead always used a default “case-ignore string” matching behavior.

• Updated the manage-certificates tool to use the SHA-1 digest algorithm instead of 256-bit SHA-2 when generating the subject key identifier extension for certificates and certificate signing requests. This makes it possible to work around a limitation in Microsoft certificate authorities, which are apparently unable to handle CSRs with 256-bit subject key identifiers.

• Fixed an issue in the search-and-mod-rate tool in which the search durations reported by the tool included not only the time required to process the search, but also the time required for the associated modify operations. Further, if the tool was configured to limit the rate at which modify operations would be attempted, the reported search durations could also include any wait imposed by the rate limiter.

• Added client-side support for the SCRAM-SHA-1, SCRAM-SHA-256, and SCRAM-SHA-512 SASL mechanisms.

• Added client-side support for a “generate password” request and response controls. When included in an add request sent to the Ping Identity Directory Server, the request control indicates that the server should generate a password for the entry and return it to the client in the corresponding response control. The ldapmodify tool has been updated to provide support for this control.

• Added client-side support for a “generate password” extended operation. When sent to the Ping Identity Directory Server, this operation will cause the server to generate one or more passwords that may be suggested to the end user when creating or updating a user entry.

• Updated the transform-ldif tool to provide options to exclude LDIF records by change type, and to exclude LDIF records that do not have a changetype.

• Updated the command-line argument parser to provide a better error message if the value the user provides to a string or Boolean value argument is not in the set of allowed values for that argument. The error message will now include a list of the allowed values.

• Updated the command-line tool interactive mode processor so that when it prompts for a password, PIN, or other sensitive value that does not get echoed to the screen, it will now ask the user to confirm the value to help ensure that they entered it correctly.

• Updated the command-line tool interactive mode processor so that when the user asks to see the set of arguments that will be used when running the tool, it will now display the full command rather than just listing the arguments. Further, if the command spans multiple lines, then all but the last line will now include a trailing backslash. This makes it more convenient to run the command non-interactively because it can simply be copied and pasted.

• Updated the argument parser to provide a more convenient way to define mutually dependent argument sets, such that if any argument in the set is provided, then all of the other arguments will also be required.

• Updated the argument parser to allow applications to define their own custom interactive mode rather than using the default one that the LDAP SDK provides.

• Added a set of StaticUtils.linesToString convenience methods that can convert a list or array of strings to a single string that includes line breaks after each line.

• Added a set of StaticUtils methods for obtaining all of the addresses associated with the network interfaces available on the system, and to get the canonical host names associated with those addresses.

UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java 4.0.11

We have just released version 4.0.11 of the UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java. It is available for download from the releases page of our GitHub repository (https://github.com/pingidentity/ldapsdk/releases), from the Files page of our SourceForge repository (https://sourceforge.net/projects/ldap-sdk/files/), and from the Maven Central Repository (https://search.maven.org/search?q=g:com.unboundid%20AND%20a:unboundid-ldapsdk&core=gav).

The LDAP SDK release notes are available at https://docs.ldap.com/ldap-sdk/docs/release-notes.html, but the changes included in this release are as follows:

• Updated the round-robin and fewest connections server sets so that they can temporarily blacklist a server that was found to be offline or unavailable. If an attempt to create a connection to a server fails, or if that connection is found to be unacceptable for some reason (e.g., it does not pass the associated health check), subsequent connection attempts will avoid that server until a background thread determines that it is available again. Blacklisted servers will still be tried as a last resort if it is not possible to get an acceptable connection to a non-blacklisted server. These server sets will now use the blacklist by default, but that can be disabled programmatically through the constructor or by setting a system property before creating the server set.

• Updated the round-robin and fewest connections server sets to improve concurrency. In previous implementations, these sets could only create one connection at a time, which could limit the rate at which connection pools using them could establish new connections. This is no longer the case, and any number of threads will be able to create connections in parallel using the server sets. This change also updated the ServerSet API to make it possible for a server set to be notified whenever a connection created with that set has been closed.

• Added a new SubtreeDeleter utility class that can make it easier to delete a specified subtree, optionally including or excluding the base entry for that subtree. It provides a good client-side alternative to the subtree delete request control, which isn’t supported by all servers and can sometimes be problematic in servers that do support it.

• Added a new ldapdelete command-line tool that can be used to delete entries from an LDAP directory server. The DNs of the entries to delete can be provided on the command line, read from a file, or read from standard input. Alternately, the server can search for and delete all entries matching one or more filters. It offers a number of options, including support for client-side and server-side subtree deletes, rate limiting, and a variety of standard and proprietary controls.

• Improved the LDAP SDK’s protection against socket write attempts that block for an indefinite length of time. This is only likely to occur when sending a large number of asynchronous requests over a connection, and only in the case that the server stops reading requests from the client or if a networking problem prevents the request from reaching the server and prevents the client from receiving any information about that failure.

• Added InMemoryDirectoryServer.applyChangesFromLDIF methods that can be used to read LDIF change records and apply them to data in the server. The changes will be applied atomically, and if any of them cannot be applied successfully, then the server data will remain unchanged.

• Updated the searchrate utility to allow specifying the base DN, scope, filter, and requested attributes using LDAP URLs rather than using separate arguments to provide appropriate values. The LDAP URL can be a fixed URL, or it can be a value pattern (including the ability to include variable content in the URLs or to load the URLs from a file). Using LDAP URLs allows for more precise control over the combination of base, scope, filter, and requested attributes on a per-request basis. Note that any addresses and ports used in the URLs will be ignored; the --hostname and --port arguments will still be used to identify which servers to use.

• Updated the ldapsearch and ldapmodify command-line tools to use an unlimited response timeout, which will prevent the tool from giving up on an operation if it takes the server a long time to return any kind of response. Previously, the tools used the LDAP SDK’s default timeout of five minutes for searches and 30 seconds for add, delete, modify, and modify DN operations.

• Updated the ldapmodify command-line tool to add a --clientSideSubtreeDleete argument that can be used to cause each delete operation to be converted to a client-side subtree delete operation, in which the tool will search for entries to delete and then delete them individually. This makes it easier to delete entries with subordinates on servers that either do not support the subtree delete request control or in which the client may not have permission to use that control.

• Added a new indent-ldap-filter command-line tool that can help make it easier to visualize complex filters with a lot of components, and especially a lot of nesting. If possible, it can also try to simplify the filter (for example, to remove unnecessary levels of nesting, like an AND inside an AND).

• Enabled concurrent socket factory use by default for all versions of Java. In the past, we have observed that at least some IBM JVMs had a thread safety issue with SSL socket factory implementations, so we only allowed a socket factory to be used concurrently by multiple threads on a whitelisted set of JVMs. We no longer believe that the IBM JDK socket factory thread safety is an issue, and there are now many more JVM vendors (e.g., Apple, Azul, Amazon Coretto, AdoptOpenJDK, and potentially Red Hat), so concurrent socket factory use will be enabled by default. If an issue is found on a particular JVM, then concurrent access can be disabled programmatically or with a system property.

• Updated the LDAPCommandLineTool API to add an option to expose an --enableSSLDebugging argument. If this argument is available, and if it is provided in the set of command-line arguments when the tool is run, then the JVM’s SSL/TLS debugging support will be enabled, and the JVM will write a large amount of TLS-related debugging information to standard error. This can help troubleshoot problems with or provide detailed information about any TLS communication that the tool attempts.

• Updated the LDAP SDK to add protection against JVM security managers that may prevent calls to certain methods, like attempts to interact with system properties, environment variables, or logger levels.

• Updated the password reader so that it will generate a more user-friendly error message if it is run in a context in which no console is available. A tool could encounter this error if its output has been redirected, or if it’s not running in an interactive shell (for example, in a cron job or system startup script).

• Dramatically improved the performance of the streamfile value pattern, which operates like the sequentialfile value pattern in that it can iterate through values in sequential order, except that streamfile doesn’t need to hold the whole file in memory at once whereas sequentialfile does.

• Updated the Filter.simplifyFilter method to simplify an AND filter containing an LDAP false filter (an OR filter with zero components, which will never match anything) to just that LDAP false filter, and to simplify an OR filter containing an LDAP true filter (an AND filter with zero components, which will match any entry) to just that LDAP true filter.

• Added a PasswordValidationDetailsResponseControl.get(LDAPException) method that makes it more convenient to get the response control from an unsuccessful operation.

• Improved the exception message that is generated if a failure occurs while trying to create a TLS-based connection. If the JVM supports creating an unconnected SSLSocket and then connecting it after the fact (which makes it possible to specify a connect timeout), and that connection attempt failed (for example, because the client did not trust the certificate presented by the server), the LDAP SDK could think that the connection was still established. Subsequent attempts to use the connection would fail, but the failure message would not accurately reflect the true cause of the problem.

• Updated the in-memory directory server to improve the diagnostic message that is returned when it rejects an add attempt because the provided entry is not within any of the configured base DNs.

• Fixed an issue in generating the normalized representation of a multivalued RDN when one or more of those components referenced an attribute type by its OID or by a name other than the first one listed in the attribute type definition. Previously, the normalized string representation would have simply used an all-lowercase representation of the provided attribute name, but it will now use an all-lowercase representation of the primary name for that attribute (if schema information is available to the client). Also, updated the logic used to determine whether an RDN has a specified name or name-value pair to handle the use of alternate names, and exposed the RDN.getNameValuePairs method to make it easier to work with an RDN’s name-value pairs.

• Fixed a bug in the ByteStringBuffer.append(CharSequence,int,int) method in which the final integer argument could be interpreted as the number of characters to append rather than the end position at which to stop appending, which could yield incorrect results when the method was called with a nonz...

UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java 4.0.10

We have just released version 4.0.10 of the UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java. It is available for download from the releases page of our GitHub repository (https://github.com/pingidentity/ldapsdk/releases), from the Files page of our SourceForge repository (https://sourceforge.net/projects/ldap-sdk/files/), and from the Maven Central Repository (https://search.maven.org/search?q=g:com.unboundid%20AND%20a:unboundid-ldapsdk&core=gav).

By the way, this is the first release that has been built from the public GitHub repository. All previous releases were built from an internal subversion repository that had been kept in sync with the GitHub repository. The only visible evidence of this change should be in the com.unboundid.ldap.sdk.Version class, where the REVISION_NUMBER constant (which has been deprecated for a couple of years) now has an integer value of -1 instead of the subversion revision number, and the REVISION_ID constant (which is the preferred replacement for REVISION_NUMBER) now reflects the GitHub commit digest (“b2272901fd62ad978017ff1aeb049cafc1999b12” for the 4.0.10 release) instead of the internal subversion revision number.

The most significant changes included in this release are:

• Fixed a bug in generating the normalized string representation of an RDN with multiple values that have the same attribute type (for example, “cn=foo+cn=bar”). In such cases, the normalized representation would only have contained one value with that attribute type, and any other values with the same attribute type would have been incorrectly omitted. Further, because the normalized string representation of an RDN is used for other purposes (for example, determining equality and comparator ordering), this may fix other related issues as well.

• Added methods for improved DN and RDN validation that make it possible to require attribute names to strictly comply with the requirements of the LDAP specification. Previously, the methods for creating and validating DNs and RDNs were always lenient with what they would allow (for example, allowing attribute names with underscores) since some servers are lenient in this regard. The existing methods are still lenient by default for the sake of backward compatibility, but there is now an option to require strict compliance with the specification.

• Improved support for TLS version 1.3 in JVMs that support it (which should be Java 11 and higher). The LDAP SDK will now automatically enable support for TLSv1.3 if it is available, and will prefer that protocol if the server also supports it, but it can still fall back to an earlier protocol version (TLSv1.2, TLSv1.1, or TLSv1, whichever is the highest version that the server supports) if necessary. As before, the default set of TLS protocols can be overridden programmatically by calling methods in the com.unboundid.util.SSLUtil class or by setting system properties.

• Updated the process for establishing a secure connection so that it immediately starts the TLS handshake on the socket, rather than waiting for it to happen on the first attempt to communicate over the connection. This can help ensure that the connection is ready to use more quickly, and can help avoid timing issues in certain cases where the prompt trust manager is used in interactive applications that may prompt for other user input.

• Updated the in-memory-directory-server command-line tool to add support for a number of new arguments, including --generateSelfSignedCertificate, --maxConcurrentConnections, --sizeLimit, --passwordAttribute, --defaultPasswordEncoding, --allowedOperationType, and --authenticationRequiredOperationType.

• Updated the ldap-debugger tool to add a --generateSelfSignedCertificate argument. If the tool is configured to listen using SSL, then this argument can be given as an alternative to the --keyStorePath argument to indicate that the tool should generate its own self-signed certificate instead of requiring the user to supply a certificate.

• Updated the ResultCode.isConnectionUsable method so that UNWILLING_TO_PERFORM is no longer included in the set of result codes that will cause the LDAP SDK to suspect that the connection may no longer be usable. Although it is possible that the connection may have become invalid, there are plenty of reasons that an LDAP server may return an UNWILLING_TO_RETURN response for a connection that remains completely usable. Since isConnectionUsable is often used to decide whether to keep the existing connection or throw it away and replace it with a new one, being too prone to indicate that a connection is no longer usable can adversely impact application performance and increase load on the directory server.

• Added a new API that can be used to change the way that the LDAP SDK resolves names to IP addresses, and IP addresses to names. The default implementation simply uses the JVM's standard name resolution methods, but a caching name resolver implementation is also provided that can offer better performance and better resilience against name service outages.

• Added a new PasswordFileReader class that makes it easier to read a password from a file. The password files may optionally be gzip-compressed and/or passphrase-encrypted, and the reader validates that the file contains exactly one line and that the line is non-empty. All command-line tools now have access to a password file reader, and LDAP SDK tools that can read passwords from files have been updated to take advantage of it.

• Updated the command-line tool framework so that tools that support reading argument values from properties files can now handle the case in which the properties file is gzip-compressed and/or passphrase-encrypted.

• Fixed a potential null pointer exception in ArgumentParser.toString that could arise if the parser was created through serialization and there were not any additional description paragraphs. Also, eliminated an unnecessary quotation mark in the generated string representation.

• Updated the ldapsearch and ldapmodify command-line tools to add support for the get backend set ID and get server ID request controls (which can be used to obtain information from a Ping Identity Directory Server or Ping Identity Directory Proxy Server about which entry-balancing sets or which server instances were used to process a request), and for the route to backend set and route to server request controls (which can be used to request that the Ping Identity Directory Proxy Server route the request to a specific group of entry-balancing backend sets or to a specific backend server).

• Updated LDAP command-line tools to support authentication with the UNBOUNDID-CERTIFICATE-PLUS-PASSWORD SASL mechanism.

• Added StaticUtils convenience methods for creating maps and sets with predefined sets of elements.

• Updated the LDIF writer to make its user-friendly display of base64-encoded values more filter-friendly. The LDIF writer has a feature that allows it to automatically include a comment below a base64-encoded value that tries to display a more human-readable version of that value, but with special characters escaped. In most cases, that more human-readable value could have been directly copied into the string representation of a search filter, but there were previously some cases where that was not true (for example, cases where the raw value included parentheses, an asterisk, a horizontal tab, a carriage return, or a line feed).

• Updated the UniquenessResponseControl class to add convenience methods to help make it easier to interpret the response. Updated the UniquenessRequestControl class to add an example to the class-level Javadoc documentation.

UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java 4.0.9

We have just released version 4.0.9 of the UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java. It is available for download from the releases page of our GitHub repository (https://github.com/pingidentity/ldapsdk/releases), from the Files page of our SourceForge repository (https://sourceforge.net/projects/ldap-sdk/files/), and from the Maven Central Repository (https://search.maven.org/search?q=g:com.unboundid%20AND%20a:unboundid-ldapsdk&core=gav).

The most significant changes included in this release are:

• Updated the command-line tool framework to allow tools to have descriptions that are comprised of multiple paragraphs.

• Updated the support for passphrase-based encryption to work around an apparent JVM bug in the support for some MAC algorithms that could cause them to create an incorrect MAC.

• Updated all existing ArgumentValueValidator instances to implement the Serializable interface. This can help avoid errors when trying to serialize an argument configured with one of those validators.

• Updated code used to create HashSet, LinkedHashSet, HashMap, LinkedHashMap, and ConcurrentHashMap instances with a known set of elements to use better algorithms for computing the initial capacity for the map to make it less likely to require the map to be dynamically resized.

• Updated the LDIF change record API to make it possible to obtain a copy of a change record with a given set of controls.

• Added additional methods for obtaining a normalized string representation of JSON objects and value components. The new methods provide more control over case sensitivity of field names and string values, and over array order.

• Improved support for running in a JVM with a security manager that prevents setting system properties (which also prevents access to the System.getProperties method because the returned map is mutable).

UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java 4.0.8

We have just released version 4.0.8 of the UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java. It is available for download from the releases page of our GitHub repository (https://github.com/pingidentity/ldapsdk/releases), from the Files page of our SourceForge repository (https://sourceforge.net/projects/ldap-sdk/files/), and from the Maven Central Repository (https://search.maven.org/search?q=g:com.unboundid%20AND%20a:unboundid-ldapsdk&core=gav).

The most significant changes included in this release are:

• Fixed a bug in the modrate tool that could cause it to use a fixed string instead of a randomly generated one as the value to use in modifications.

• Fixed an address caching bug in the RoundRobinDNSServerSet class. An inverted comparison could cause it to use cached addresses after they expired, and to cached addresses that weren’t expired.

• Updated the ldapmodify tool to remove the restriction that prevented using arbitrary controls with an LDAP transaction or the Ping-proprietary multi-update extended operation.

• Updated a number of locations in the code that caught Throwable so that they re-throw the original Throwable instance (after performing appropriate cleanup) if that instance was an Error or perhaps a RuntimeException.

• Added a number of JSONObject convenience methods to make it easier to get the value of a specified field as a string, Boolean, number, object, array, or null value.

• Added a StaticUtils.toArray convenience method that can be useful for converting a collection to an array when the type of element in the collection isn’t known at compile time.

• Added support for parsing audit log messages generated by the Ping Identity Directory Server for versions 7.1 and later, including generating LDIF change records that can be used to revert change records (if the audit log is configured to record changes in a reversible form).

UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java 4.0.7

We have just released the UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java version 4.0.7, available for download from the releases page of our GitHub repository, from the Files page of our SourceForge project, and from the Maven Central Repository. The most significant changes in this release include:

• Fixed an issue in the LDAPConnectionPool and LDAPThreadLocalConnectionPool classes when created with a connection that is already established and authenticated (as opposed to being created from a server set and bind request). Internally, the LDAP SDK created its own server set and bind request from the provided connection's state information, but it incorrectly included bind credentials in the server set. Under most circumstances, this would merely cause the LDAP SDK to send two bind requests (the second a duplicate of the first) when establishing a new connection as part of the pool. However, it caused a bigger problem when using the new setBindRequest methods that were introduced in the 4.0.6 release. Because the server set was created with bind credentials, the pool would create a connection that tried to use those old credentials before sending a second bind request with the new credentials, and this would fail if the old credentials were no longer valid.

• Fixed an issue with the behavior that the LDAP SDK exhibited when configured to automatically follow referrals. If the server returned a search result reference that the LDAP SDK could not follow (for example, because none of the URLs were valid, none of the servers could be reached, none of the searches succeeded, in those servers, etc.), the LDAP SDK would assign a result code of "referral" to the search operation, which would cause it to throw an exception when the search completed (as is the case for most non-success result codes). The LDAP SDK will no longer override the result code for the search operation, but will instead use whatever result code the server returned in its search result done message. Any search result references that the LDAP SDK could not automatically follow will be made available to the caller through the same mechanism that would have been used if the SDK had not been configured to automatically follow referrals (that is, either hand them off to a search result listener or collect them in a list to include in the search result object). The LDAP SDK was already making the unfollowable search result references available in this manner, but the client probably wouldn't have gotten to the point of looking for them because of the exception resulting from the overridden operation result code.

• Added a new LDAPConnectionPoolHealthCheck.performPoolMaintenance method that can be used to perform processing on the pool itself (rather than on any individual connection) at regular intervals as specified by the connection pool's health check interval. This method will be invoked by the health check thread after all other periodic health checking is performed.

• Added a new PruneUnneededConnectionsLDAPConnectionPoolHealthCheck class that can be used to monitor the size of a connection pool over time, and if the number of available (that is, not currently in use) connections is consistently greater than a specified minimum for a given length of time, then the number of connections in the pool can be reduced to that minimum. This can be used to automatically shrink the size of the pool during periods of reduced activity.

• Updated the Schema class to provide additional constructors and methods that can be used to attempt to retrieve the schema without silently ignoring errors about unparsable elements. Previously, if a schema entry contained one or more unparsable elements, they would be silently ignored. It is now possible to more easily obtain information about unparsable elements or to have the LDAP SDK throw an exception if it encounters any unparsable elements.

• Added createSubInitialFilter, createSubAnyFilter, and createSubFinalFilter methods to the Filter class that are more convenient to use than the existing createSubstringFilter methods for substring filters that only have one type of component.

• Updated the Entry.diff method when operating in reversible mode so that when altering the values of an existing attribute, the delete modifications will be ordered before the add modifications. Previously, the adds came before the deletes, but this could cause problems in some directory servers, especially when the modifications are intended to change the case of a value in a case-insensitive attribute (for example, the add could be ignored or rejected because the value already exists in the entry, or the delete could end up removing the value entirely). Ordering the deletes before the adds should provide much more reliable results.

• Updated the modrate tool to add a new "--valuePattern" argument that can be used to specify the pattern to use to generate new values. This argument is an alternative to the "--valueLength" and "--characterSet" arguments and allows for more flexibility in the types of values that can be generated.

• Updated the manage-account tool so that the arguments related to TOTP secrets are marked sensitive. This will ensure that the value is not displayed in the clear in certain cases like interactive mode output or tool invocation logging.

• Added a new "streamfile" value pattern component that operates like the existing "sequentialfile" component except that it limits the amount of the file that is read into memory at any given time, so it is more suitable for reading values from very large files.

• Added a new "timestamp" value pattern component that can be used to include either the current time or a randomly selected time from a given range in a variety of formats.

• Added a new "uuid" value pattern component that can be used to include a randomly generated universally unique identifier (UUID).

• Added a new "random" value pattern component that can be used to include a specified number of randomly selected characters from a given character set.

• Added a StaticUtils.toUpperCase method to complement the existing StaticUtils.toLowerCase method.

• Added Validator.ensureNotNullOrEmpty methods that work for collections, maps, arrays, and character sequences.

• Added LDAPTestUtils methods that can be used to make assertions about the diagnostic message of an LDAP result or an LDAP exception.

• Added client-side support for a new exec task that can be used to invoke a specified command in the Ping Identity Directory Server (subject to security restrictions imposed by the server).

• Added client-side support for a new file retention task that can be used to examine files in a specified directory, identify files matching a given pattern, and delete any of those files that do not match count-based, age-based, or size-based criteria.

• Added client-side support for a new delay task that can be used sleep for a specified period of time, until the server work queue reports that all worker threads are idle and there are no pending operations, or until a given search or set of searches match at least one entry. The delay task is primarily intended to be used as a spacer between other tasks in a dependency chain.

• Updated support for the ignore NO-USER-MODIFICATION request control to make it possible to set the criticality when creating an instance of the control. Previously, new instances were always critical.

• Updated the ldapmodify tool to include the ignore NO-USER-MODIFICATION request control in both add and modify requests if the --ignoreNoUserModification argument was provided. Previously, that argument only caused the control to be included in add requests. Further, the control will now be marked non-critical instead of critical.

• Updated the task API to add support for a number of new properties, including the email addresses of users to notify on task start and successful completion (in addition to the existing properties specifying users to email on error or on any type of completion), and flags indicating whether the server should alert on task start, successful completion, or failure.

• Updated the argument parser's properties file support so that it expects the file to use the ISO 8859-1 encoding, and to support Unicode escape sequences that are comprised of a backslash followed by the letter u and four hexadecimal digits.

• Updated the tool invocation logger to add a failsafe mechanism for preventing passwords from being included in the log. Although it will already redact the values of any arguments that are declared sensitive, it will now also redact the values of any arguments whose name suggests that their value is a password.

UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java 4.0.6

We have just released the UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java version 4.0.6, available for download from the releases page of our GitHub repository, from the Files page of our SourceForge project, and from the Maven Central Repository. The most significant changes in this release include:

• We fixed a number of issues in the way that the LDAP SDK handled characters whose UTF-8 representation requires more than two bytes (and therefore requires two Java chars to represent a single character). Issues related to these characters were found in code for matching rules, DNs and RDNs, and search filters.

• We fixed an issue in the ldapsearch tool that could cause it to use an incorrect scope when constructing search requests from LDAP URLs that were read from a file.

• We fixed a bug in schema handling that could arise if an object class definition did not explicitly specify an object class type (STRUCTURAL, AUXILIARY, or ABSTRACT). In some cases, the type could be incorrectly inherited from the superclass rather than assuming the default type of STRUCTURAL.

• We updated the LDAPConnectionPool and LDAPThreadLocalConnectionPool classes to add new setServerSet and setBindRequest methods. These new methods make it possible to update an existing pool to change the logic that it uses for establishing and authenticating new connections.

• We added a new LDAPRequest.setReferralConnector method that makes it possible to set a custom referral connector on a per-request basis. We also added a new RetainConnectExceptionReferralConnector class that makes it easier to obtain the exception (if any) that was caught on the last attempt to establish a connection for the purpose of following a referral.

• Updated the in-memory directory server to better handle any java.lang.Errors that occur while interacting with a client connection. These kinds of errors should not happen under normal circumstances but may be generated by third-party code (for example, an InMemoryOperationInterceptor), and it is possible for the JVM to generate them in extraordinary circumstances like running out of memory. In such cases, the thread responsible for interacting with that client would exit without returning a response for the operation being processed and without closing the operation. The LDAP SDK will now attempt to return an error (if appropriate for the type of operation being processed) and close the connection.

• Updated the manage-certificates tool to fix an incorrect interpretation of the path length element of a basic constraints extension.

• Updated manage-certificates to add support for importing PEM-encoded RSA private keys that are not wrapped in a PKCS#8 envelope (that is, from a file whose header contains “BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY” instead of “BEGIN PRIVATE KEY”). Previously, it was only possible to import private keys using the PKCS#8 format.

• Updated manage-certificates to add an --allow-sha-1-signature-for-issuer-certificates argument to the check-certificate-usability subcommand. If this argument is provided, then the tool will continue to call out issuer certificates whose signature is based on the now-considered-weak SHA-1 digest algorithm, but it will no longer cause the tool to exit with an error just because of that issue. This argument has no effect for certificates that use a signature based on the extremely weak MD5 digest, and it also does not have any effect if the certificate at the head of the chain (that is, the server certificate rather than the root certificate) has a SHA-1-based signature.

• Added client-side support for a new “reload HTTP connection handler certificates” task that may be used in some Ping Identity server products to request that the server dynamically reload the certificate key and trust stores used by all HTTP connection handler instances that provide support for HTTPS.