Next message: jamsden@us.ibm.com: "Re: Stable URL's for working resources?"
From: jamsden@us.ibm.com
To: ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
Message-ID: <852568BA.00051736.00@d54mta03.raleigh.ibm.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2000 20:55:34 -0400
Subject: Re: Questions on activities
<geoff>
The reason CM systems restrict the names of versioning metadata is
because those restrictions are essential for an implementation that
scales. In particular, you can't efficiently cache information that
is out of your control (i.e. in a namespace you don't control).
So versioning metadata names will need to be restricted in order to
provide CM functionality for the number of resources found on today's
web sites.
</geoff>
<jra>
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see this. I agree that CM
systems need to make all kinds of restrictions in order to manage the
integrity of their repositories, and provide efficient implementations
through predictable caching. But I don't see what this has to do with a
WebDAV server that interfaces to these CM systems. I think the server
mappings to the CM system allow the CM system to maintain its restrictions
while the additional flexibility is implemented only in the WebDAV server.
So for example, the CM system can do all the caching it wants, and restrict
versioning metadata as necessary to make it efficient. Its up to the WebDAV
server implementation on that CM system to manage its bindings to the
cached and restriced resources, including any additional caching and
restrictions the WebDAV server may wish to impose on its behalf. Its using
WebDAV as an associative object between the many-to-many association betwen
clients and CM systems that enables this flexibility. So I don't think
these CM restrictions are invalid, I just don't think the necessarily need
to be exposed in the WebDAV protocol. Make sense?
</jra>