Results of Advanced Collections Conference Call

The Advanced Collections conference call of October 6 resolved two of the
four issues we considered:

Terminology:  We will continue to use the term "Direct Reference" for a
reference that gets resolved by the server, so that clients have the
illusion that they are interacting directly with the target resource.  We
will use the term "Redirect Reference" for a reference that the client is
aware of and must explicitly follow to its target.

Which methods get passed through for direct references:  We agreed, as was
proposed in Chicago, that all methods get passed through except DELETE,
MOVE, and COPY.

We were unable to reach agreement about whether optional backpointers should
be supported.  Jim Amsden has sent out a nice summary of his objections to
supporting optional backpointers, as a starting point for further discussion
on the mailing list.

We were unable to reach agreement on whether clients should have a choice
about whether deleting the target of a direct reference deletes all
references to it.  A note will follow summarizing the discussion of this
issue.

Please note that both the remaining issues affect the requirements, which we
hope to revise once more for last call in the next few weeks.  To keep to
this schedule, I would like to request that we try to resolve these issues
by Friday, October 16.

Thanks.

--Judy

Judith A. Slein
Xerox Corporation
jslein@crt.xerox.com
(716)422-5169
800 Phillips Road 105/50C
Webster, NY 14580

Received on Wednesday, 7 October 1998 10:46:15 UTC