3.1.1.3.4.1.32.2 Soft Size Limit

The hintValue for this hint is a BER encoding specified by the following ASN.1 structure:

 SoftSizeLimitHintValue ::= SEQUENCE {
     limitValue    INTEGER
 }

If an LDAP_SERVER_SORT_OID control does not accompany this hint, this hint is ignored.

Given that the value of LimitValue is X, given an imposed LDAP size limit of Y (whether specified in the LDAP search operation or imposed by an implementation-specific default value), and given that a sort order is specified in an LDAP_SERVER_SORT_OID control, when these values are all applied to an LDAP search operation, the LDAP search operation conceptually results in a list of objects to return as a response to the request. Due to the size limit, the cardinality of the list is less than or equal to Y. The elements in the list are ordered by the attribute specified in the LDAP_SERVER_SORT_OID control. If the list of objects contains fewer than X objects, or exactly X objects, then the Soft Size Limit hint has no affect. If the LDAP search operation identifies more than X objects, then any objects in the list subsequent to the Xth object that do not have a value of the sort attribute that is equal to the sort value of the Xth object (as defined by the equality comparison rules for that attribute) are removed from the list before the response is returned to the client.

If the search operation would otherwise have returned success and if one or more objects are removed from the list according to the earlier algorithm, the search operation will return sizeLimitExceeded / <unrestricted>.