Re: Attributes in Prelim DAV Spec

Daniel W. Connolly wrote:
> 
> In message <c=US%a=_%p=msft%l=RED-44-MSG-961111190130Z-30364@INET-02-IMC.micros
> oft.com>, Yaron Goland writes:
> >Nothing. It's a question of aesthetics. 
> 
> Using <> characters will be expensive in deployment.
> If we all we get is nicer looking URLs, then I think it's
> not worth it.
> 
> But I think there is somthing to it: if we adopt Charlie's
> suggestion, then what about existing URLs with ; in them.
> That is, suppose I've got a document I've been publishing
> as:
> 	http://foo.org/docs;id=27
> 
> for years, and now I want to add attribute functionality
> to my service. What's the address of the 'author' address
> of the doc above? Is it:
> 
> 	http://foo.org/docs;id=27;attribute=author
> 
> I suppose that could work, but it make the server's job pretty hard:
> the server might have to try lots of different ways of splitting the
> URL between the attribute part and the base resouce part.

Seems to me that any kind of URL markup is going to suffer from this kind of
problem. The simple solution (I think) is to require the "real" URL to be
escaped:

 	http://foo.org/docs%3bid=27;attribute=author

> 
> Worse yet: what if somebody is already using the name:
> 
> 	http://foo.org/docs;attribute=XYZ
> 
> for something else? Is that a problem?

Ouch. I guess you'll have to have a separate address space to solve this one,
as in:

 	http://foo.org/DAV/docs%3battribute=XYZ

where DAV is chosen per-server.

Cheers,

Ben.

> 
> Dan
> 
> >>From:	Charlie Brooks [SMTP:cbrooks@osf.org]
> >>Sent:	Monday, November 11, 1996 9:03 AM
> >>To:	w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
> >>Subject:	RE: Attributes in Prelim DAV Spec
> >>
> >>At 08:44 AM 11/11/96 PST, Judith Slein wrote:
> >>>
> >>>URI = (absoluteURI | relativeURI) *("<" Attribute ">") ["#" fragment]
> >>>
> >>
> >>What problems would arise if we were to utilize existing URI syntax instead
> >>of inventing something new? What about 
> >>
> >>	http://host/some/path;attribute=Abstract.author
> 

-- 
Ben Laurie                Phone: +44 (181) 994 6435  Email: ben@algroup.co.uk
Freelance Consultant and  Fax:   +44 (181) 994 6472
Technical Director        URL: http://www.algroup.co.uk/Apache-SSL
A.L. Digital Ltd,         Apache Group member (http://www.apache.org)
London, England.          Apache-SSL author

Received on Tuesday, 12 November 1996 06:12:56 UTC