Re: WeDAV Versioning Summary

jamsden@us.ibm.com
Wed, 14 Apr 1999 09:29:35 -0400 

From: jamsden@us.ibm.com
To: ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
Message-ID: <85256753.004A5678.00@d54mta03.raleigh.ibm.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 09:29:35 -0400
Subject: Re: WeDAV Versioning Summary



Sankar,

There's no difference between a collection and a"sub-collection".
Collections follow the Composite pattern. A collection is a kind of
resource that contains URLs of resources (including recursively other
collections). Anything you can do with a resource you can do with a
collection.

I have no idea what a 'sequential activity' is. Unless someone else knows
what this means, I'll remove it.

"Simple parallel development" is unfortunately simple from the eyes of the
beholder. The intent is to allow parallel development in situations where
the client,server, or both don't want to implement activities.
Unfortunately this means that client applications and users have to manage
multiple descendents of the same revision themselves using labels. Simple
in this case seems to mean simple for the server, not the client or user.
It works pretty well though if most of your revisions are mutable.

I'll include your reorganization, forward references, and definition
updates.

Thanks for the feedback. You win the prize of being the first to respond.






"Sankar Virdhagriswaran" <sv@crystaliz.com> on 04/13/99 07:31:55 PM

To:   Jim Amsden/Raleigh/IBM, ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
cc:

Subject:  Re: WeDAV Versioning Summary




Jim,

Thank you for this summary. I was about to ask for one due to all the back
and forth on activities, snapshots, etc. See below for some nits.

> A resource or collection can be put under version control.

What about sub-collections? Are they deliberately left out? The wording
does
not make that clear.

>
> A revision of a collection is modified by adding or removing member URLs.

Again the same question: can collections contain other collections?

> Each activity represents a thread of development. Servers may support
> multiple sequential activities that can be used to enable controlled
> parallel development.

What is the intent (and importance) of saying that the activities are
'sequential activities'? It is confusing wording in the context of
'parallel
development'.

>These different activities can be merged together at
> some later time in order to integrate the changes.

Right now, the wording describes an intent, not a specification of a model.
It will be useful to put a reference or link to the description of merge
that follows later.

> Simple parallel development can be accomplished by using the null
activity.

The use of the term 'null activity' out of the blue. Might be wise to refer
to what this 'null activitiy' is.

> A server may allow many checkouts of the same revision using the null
> activity. Merge is not supported for the null activity, client
applications
> are responsible for integrating the changes.

But, the above three sentances don't say how 'simple parallel development'
can be accomplished with 'null activity'.

> A workspace revision selection rule can specify any number of revision
> labels, activities, configurations, or the functor "latest" to specify
what
> revision to select.

But, but, what is a configuration? It has not been defined so far. Maybe
put
a link to the definition of configuration that is to be found later.

> activity, and may result in merge conflicts. A configuration matches a
> revision contained in that configuration.

Again, will be useful to define configuration.

> Versioned Collections
>
> A collection contains a set of member URLs.

For completeness, I will ask again: can a collection contain other
collections?