RE: Last call: range locking

I second the motion. Let the requirements document read:"Whereas
documents may contain defined sections, specified by such concepts as
pages, chapters, and byte ranges, and whereas the purpose of DAV is to
facilitate the editing of a single document simultaneously by multiple
users, and whereas often multiple users wish to independently edit
different sections of a document, let the DAV protocol provide a
mechanism to identify these defined sections and determine their URLs so
as to prevent collisions amongst multiple users."
Or something less pompous than that =)
		Yaron

>-----Original Message-----
>From:	Fabio Vitali [SMTP:fabio@CS.UniBO.IT]
>Sent:	Tuesday, March 04, 1997 10:58 AM
>To:	w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
>Subject:	Re: Last call: range locking
>
>I personally wouldn't mind having some precedents on how to deal with
>arbitrary subparts of a resource. There will be many more situations
>besides locking in which handling subparts will become useful.
>
>Two points I would like to stress:
>
>a) "Ranges", as in "byte-ranges", are too restrictive and implementation
>oriented for being really and generally useful. Can't we provide a more
>fuzzy and evocative term?
>
>b) Specifying the management of subparts as one of the requirements that
>WebDAV needs to discuss does not mean that solutions need to be invented
>anew.
>
>So I believe we should definitely state an agreeable requirement for
>managing partial resources, and then happily discuss on range URLs or
>RANGELOCK or whatever.
>
>As I have learnt the hard way from Yaron :-), we should keep requirements
>and implementation separated. We can have as many and as different
>requirements as we care, and the discussion needs to be on their
>justifications only.
>
>When someone proposes a solution, well, the relevant requirements should
>have been accepted already.
>
>Therefore, if eventually range URLs will be commonplace, we will find out
>that the requirement of partial locks is already and naturally satisfied by
>a plain lock on a range URL, and we won't need to deal with it any further.
>
>>Pro Range Locking - Steve Carter, Yaron Y. Goland, and Gregory J.
>>Woodhouse,
>>Anti Range Locking - Larry Masinter, Mark Day, and Fabio Vitali
>
>Er, it's not that I am anti range locking, I am anti locking tout court, as
>I believe we will have to face problems with *any* kind of locks, although
>I'll admit that problems with ranges will be more frequent than with other
>types of locking.
>
>Fabio
>
>Fabio Vitali                            Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly,
>Dept of Computer Science         Man got to sit and wonder "Why, why, why?'
>Univ. of Bologna  ITALY               Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land,
>e-mail: fabio@cs.unibo.it            Man got to tell himself he understand.
>                                                             Kurt Vonnegut
>

Received on Tuesday, 4 March 1997 14:21:39 UTC