Re: Draft IETF DeltaV Versioning

Hi all,

> Dear Colleges,
>
> >From the experience we have gathered trying to implement the DeltaV
> protocol, we have some basic comments and suggestions to make before the
> end of the last call period for the DeltaV protocol.  We regard these
> issues to be important for the future development of DeltaV and WebDAV.
> This message is cross posted to the WebDAV mailing list because the main
> points pertain as much to WebDAV as to DeltaV.
>
> Valid XML should be used in WebDAV instead of simply well formed XML
> ====================================================================
>
> Using simply well formed XML misses half the benefit of XML: the
> automatic detection of syntactic errors.  This is the best way to insure
> that a protocol stays open and correct.  Any client or server can be
> easily tested for at least syntactic conformance.  This does not means
> that every transaction must be validated, but ensuring that it can is
> important.

I totally agree! If you look, for example, at implementations of RFC2518 you will
come to the conclusion that a lot of problems of the "realworld" WebDAV client
server communication are caused by the fact that a lot of clients and servers do
*not*  implement the DTD of RFC 2518 exactly because they don't have to. To my mind
a protocol should define a precise language which every client and server has to
speak in order to guarantee a perfect client server communication. Moreover clients
and servers are easier to implement if they are based on  strict rules to which
they have to obey.

Best, Hartmut