Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2000 23:43:03 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <200004110343.XAA10282@tantalum.atria.com> From: "Geoffrey M. Clemm" <geoffrey.clemm@rational.com> To: ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org Subject: Re: Stable URLs From: jamsden@us.ibm.com 1. As Tim pointed out yesterday, why are we even considering these stable URLs for down-level client support? Why isn't this just a client binding issue? If a down-level client wants a stable URL to access revisions of a versioned resource, some other versioning aware client could provide them through bindings. Some versioning clients may even do this automatically. I don't see why the server and protocol need to get involved in this kind of policy issue. Workspaces and revision selection, plus bindings provides everything needed. Many versioning implementations do not support a BIND operation. Those that do support it often only support a BIND to a versioned resource, not a BIND to a particular revision of a versioned resource. But they all give you some way of getting to a particular revision of a versioned resource. JimW wants us to require that a core versioning server provide a URL that gets you to a particular revision, so that versioning unaware clients can get to a particular revision. I am still unconvinced that this must be a core feature, since if it is so important, the servers that provide it will rapidly dominate those that do not, but on the other hand, I haven't heard any good arguments for why it would be *hard* for a core versioning server to provide this functionality, so I'm inclined to vote to leave it in core versioning until I hear such an argument. 2. Where does the protocol actually require these stable bindings for its own purposes? I'm note quite sure what you mean by "for its own purposes". The main argument for stable bindings is to ensure that versioning aware clients can expose multiple revisions of a single versioned resource to versioning unaware clients. 3. If we have to have stable bindings (note I'm using that term now as I still think servers need to be free to impliment and reorganize their stores independently of the WebDAV protocol), then why not have the "human" URLs be live properties accessed through the stable bindings instead of using a report? Because each workspace potentially has a different "human" URL that identifies a given versioned resource, so the "human" URL is a function of both the stable URL and the workspace. Cheers, Geoff