Re: Core versioning issues and nits

   From: "Lisa Dusseault" <lisa@xythos.com>

   > I guess that I'm of a different opinion -- namely that URLs are
   > cheap and not in danger of being all 'used up'.

   In fact, it's not so much that that URLs are scarce, but that good user
   interfaces are difficult.  How do I explain what URL namespaces are
   reserved for special-purpose resources like VRs, VHRs, or (to take an
   example from another realm) principals?  At least you could give me a
   good error message to return when users try to create new resources or
   collections in reserved namespaces!

I think that a 405 status return, along with an Allow header indicating
what MKxxx method would succeed in this space (if any) gives you
all the information you can really use.

   > The spec. explicitly allows
   > versioning metadata to reside on other hosts, so you can (dare I say,
   > easily) virtually host the metadata in it's own URL namespace without
   > impinging on the creativity of clients.

   How, then, can the client be expected to COPY where the source is a
   version URL, and the destination is a working resource?  To the client
   it "looks like" the source and destination are on different hosts, and
   the client might reasonably expect this not to work, since most servers
   don't implement server-to-server copy.

It seems like a sensible client should try the COPY first rather than
guessing it will fail.  And if it fails, a client can just do the
appropriate  GET/PUT/PROPFIND/PROPPATCH.

Cheers,
Geoff

Received on Sunday, 4 February 2001 16:38:40 UTC