Revised charter

Here is a revised proposed charter for DASL, based on some feedback and some
wordsmithing by various folks in Los Angeles. Please comment on this asap to
the list (or privately to me), since I intend to submit this to the IESG by
the end of next week.

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DAV Searching and Locating (DASL)

Last Modified: 04-02-98

Chair(s):

Alex Hopmann, <alexhop@microsoft.com>

Applications Area Director(s):

Keith Moore, <moore@cs.utk.edu>
Harald Alvestrand <Harald.T.Alvestrand@uninett.no>

Applications Area Advisor:

TBD

Mailing Lists:

General Discussion: www-webdav-dasl@w3.org

To Subscribe: www-webdav-dasl-request@w3.org Put subscribe in body

Archive: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-webdav-dasl/

Description of Working Group

The goal of this working group is to define and develop an extensible DAV
Searching and Locating protocol as an application of HTTP.  The working
group will define protocol elements that enable server-executed queries to
locate resources based upon their property values and text content as
expressed by the DAV data model.

Problem Definition

WEBDAV and HTTP enable client-side searching by defining a simple set of
mechanisms (the PROPFIND and GET methods) to locate those resources meeting
client-defined criteria. These mechanisms can be inefficient, do not
adequately deal with some simple content-based queries, and do not take
advantage of the advanced querying and caching capabilities of modern
storage systems.

The DASL Protocol will enable a HTTP/1.1 compliant scheme for server-side
searching to address these limitations. The working group will define the
following for a server-side searching mechanism:

- How to express the search: the syntax and semantics of a query
- How to focus the query by identifying its scope
- How to discover the search capability of a resource.
- The syntax for the search results


Working Group Scope

A generalized search mechanism is a broad problem space. It encompasses a
variety of object models, typing schemes, and media. By focusing on a subset
of this space, the problem of locating resources based on property values
and text content, the working group will leverage much of the existing work
that has been done on querying under simple property and resource models.

In-Scope items include:
- typing
- comparisons (>, >=, <, <=, !=, ==)
- internationalized content
- text content matching
- dealing with arbitrary XML values

Out-of-scope items include:
- definitions of well-known properties
- server-to-server communication protocols
- cross-language comparisons
- searching for non-text content (images, video, audio, etc.)
- client control of server administration (e.g. indexing)

Deliverables

The final output of this working group is expected to be two documents:

(1) A requirements document, that describes the high-level functional
requirements for DASL, including rationale. This will be an Informational
document.

(2) A protocol specification describing the additions to HTTP (new methods,
headers, request bodies, and response bodies) needed to implement the DASL
requirements. This will be a Standards Track document.

Goals and Milestones:

Done - Draft Working Group Charter. Establish mailing list, archive, and
homepage.

Feb 98 - Produce initial Requirements document. Submit as Internet Draft.

Mar 98 - Produce DASL protocol specification. Submit as Internet Draft.

Mar 98 - Meet in LA IETF and hold working group meeting to develop the
protocol specification and requirements document.

Aug 98 - Meet in Chicago IETF to further develop protocol specification.

Aug 98 - Complete Scenarios document.

Dec 98 - Create final version of DASL requirements document.  Submit as
Informational RFC.

Mar 99 - Complete revisions to DASL protocol. Submit as a Proposed Standard
RFC

Received on Saturday, 4 April 1998 23:47:35 UTC