---
title: Client application design guidelines
description: "• Keep the base URL and credentials outside the application binary • Use a dedicated least-privilege ODDC account • Validate the server certificate and never disable TLS validation in production • Set connection and request timeouts • Follow the /ping…"
url: "https://activerecord.com/docs/api/client-application-design-guidelines/"
updated: "2026-09-20"
category: "REST API - Oculens DDC Server (ODDC Server) 5.1"
---

# Client application design guidelines

• Keep the base URL and credentials outside the application binary

• Use a dedicated least-privilege ODDC account

• Validate the server certificate and never disable TLS validation in production

• Set connection and request timeouts

• Follow the /ping redirect

• Preserve documentId and childDocumentId as different identifiers

• Retry only transient failures such as 429 and temporary 500 responses

• Do not retry unchanged 400, 401, 403, or 404 requests indefinitely

• Make downloads idempotent by recording completed childDocumentId values

• Poll at a moderate interval and add random jitter when several clients are running

• Treat filenames as display values and identifiers as authoritative

• Log status codes and request times without logging passwords or authorization headers