Re: Requirements for Collections

Well described set of Requirements for Collections. First, I would like to appreciate Judith's
great work. I am in agreement with most of the requirments. Followining are some of my comments/
issues. 

1. 	A resource is a direct member of only one collection

	Is there any rationale for this "restriction" on resource membership? If resource R is a direct member
	of collection C and resource R( though the name is R; it may be different from R in Collection C) can be
	a direct member of another collection D. This is very common scenario. In my opinion, there is no
	reason why we cannot have multiple memberships. 

5.	Maintaining referential integrity is not required.
	What is the purpose of create a "member-by-reference" without making sure that "reference"
	is not a "dead reference" or has required permissions to access it? 

6.	Preventing cycles is not required
	I would suggest to drop this requirements. Web DAV servers need not concern about cycles.

7.	It is possible to add a member-by-reference to a collection
8.	It is possible to remove a member-by-reference to a collection
	What happens if an external member(member-by-refernce) doesn't have authorizations
	or if it is a dead "resource"(it doesn't exist)? I would suggest make this requirement as an optional
	and if server implementations choose to implement this ( a typical requirement in Database based 	implementations), servers can do so.

9. 	It is possible for a member-by-reference to carry out its own properties, distinct from those of resource
	it referes to:

	In a very simplistic view, all members of a collection, regardless of whether it is a direct member or
	a member-by-reference it will have its own properties. If it is a member-by-reference it inherits its "source"
	properties in addition to having its own properties.	

	I would suggest  requirements 11 and 9 can be combined into a single requirement describing about 
	properties of "direct members" and "members-by-reference"
	
13.	Members by refernce are not required to have names relative to the collection.
	This scenario is true not only in legacy applications but also in various business application 
	publishing reports to webdav name space. But these resources are not relative to collections.

Received on Sunday, 22 February 1998 23:07:46 UTC