- From: Jim Davis <jrd3@alum.mit.edu>
- Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 12:51:35 -0800
- To: "Jim Whitehead" <ejw@cse.ucsc.edu>, <www-webdav-dasl@w3.org>
At 11:53 AM 1/25/2002 -0800, Jim Whitehead wrote: > > Q1) Should the draft attempt to define Query Schema Discovery for > > DAV:basicsearch? Has anybody actually *implemented* QSD? > >... I'm not sure what a client woudl do with the >information. As I recall, the belief of the original authors (or at least my belief) was that some server vendors were very likely to implement extensions (properties or operators) and that these extensions, although proprietary, might still be widely enough known that client writers might support them. QSD allows a client to discover whether a well known extension X is or is not implemented on a specific server. Smart clients might attempt to bridge the differences between different servers. In some cases, it might make sense for client programs to show users the existence of discovered properties or operators, *even if the client does not understand them*. if the properties or operators have reasonable names the human can guess the semantics. Thus a client that discovers that a DASL server has properties "latitude" and "longitude" can show these in a query form, and let the user enter values. This might even make sense for operators, if they have sensible names. QSD provides enough information for a smart client application to construct a generic query dialog (ie it tells how many arguments the operator takes). I must admit that I do not know of any implementation of QSD, nor do I know of anyone who intends to write such a smart client. My ignorance does not mean it does not exist though.
Received on Friday, 25 January 2002 15:52:14 UTC