RFC 3876 Returning Matched

When reading an attribute from an entry using the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol version 3 (LDAPv3) [2], it is normally only possible to read either the attribute type, or the attribute type and all its values. It is not possible to selectively read just a few of the attribute values. If an attribute holds many values, for example, the userCertificate attribute, or the subschema publishing operational attributes objectClasses and attributeTypes [3], then it may be desirable for the user to be able to selectively retrieve a subset of the values, specifically, those attribute values that match some user defined selection criteria. Without the control specified in this document, a client must read all of the attribute’s values and filter out the unwanted values, necessitating the client to implement the matching rules. It also requires the client to