RE: Workspaces as versionable resources

From: Tim Ellison/OTT/OTI (Tim_Ellison@oti.com)
Date: Tue, May 23 2000

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    To: ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
    Message-ID: <OF675CA054.BDB7F3EC-ON852568E8.0045A26A@ott.oti.com>
    From: "Tim Ellison/OTT/OTI" <Tim_Ellison@oti.com>
    Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 08:43:11 -0400
    Subject: RE: Workspaces as versionable resources
    
    
    <geoff>
    The way you create a deep revision of a collection
    is to place that collection in a workspace, and then
    create a baseline for that workspace.  So a deep revision
    of a collection is called a "baseline".
    </geoff>
    
    
    This is puzzling.  I would expect the MKBASELINE operation to capture the
    state of the workspace verbatim.
    Since the workspace may not contain all the members of a versioned
    collection, it is not a 'deep' revision of the collection.
    
    
    Tim
    
    
                                                                                                                        
                        "Clemm,                                                                                         
                        Geoff"               To:     "'Tim Ellison/OTT/OTI'" <Tim_Ellison@oti.com>,                     
                        <gclemm@Ratio        ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org                                                 
                        nal.Com>             cc:                                                                        
                                             Subject:     RE: Workspaces as versionable resources                       
                        20-05-00                                                                                        
                        06:24 PM                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        
    
    
    
    There are three questions here:
    
    - have we lost the ability to create a configuration?
    
    - have we lost the ability to create a deep revision of a collection?
    
    - are CHECKOUT/CHECKIN the appropriate way to create baselines?
    
    The answer to the first question is "no".
    Once we removed dynamic revision selection from workspaces,
    a workspace provided all the functionality of a configuration,
    so there was no reason to have two different resource types
    (i.e. you can create a configuration, but it's now called
    a "workspace").
    
    The answer to the second question is also "no".
    The way you create a deep revision of a collection
    is to place that collection in a workspace, and then
    create a baseline for that workspace.  So a deep revision
    of a collection is called a "baseline".
    
    As for question three, Chris has also objected to using
    CHECKOUT/CHECKIN to create baselines, so let's just switch
    to a MKBASELINE method.  This will also make things more
    uniform, since otherwise there were two ways to create a
    workspace (MKWORKSPACE and CHECKOUT applied to a baseline).
    
    I'll make this change, and try to get out a 04.6 draft by
    Monday.
    
    Cheers,
    Geoff
    
    
    -----Original Message-----
    From: Tim Ellison/OTT/OTI [mailto:Tim_Ellison@oti.com]
    Sent: Friday, May 19, 2000 9:18 AM
    To: ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
    Subject: Workspaces as versionable resources
    
    
    I would like to declare my dissatisfaction with workspaces as versionable
    resources.
    From what I can make out, the only reason that this was considered was to
    provide a "snapshot" mechanism to capture the state of the workspace (and
    in particular its target selections).
    However, by making workspaces versionable, we also get into the quagmire of
    selecting revisions/working resources of a workspace resource.
    The obvious question is, when specifying (in a header) a URL to a versioned
    workspace, which workspace is used to select revisions of the workspace and
    versioned collections along the path?
    ...but it also permits structures that don't seem to have any useful
    meaning, such as branching in workspace history.
    
    We appear to have lost two useful concepts.
    (1) Configurations, (which could be used to capture the state of a
    workspace target selection),
    (2) Deep versioning of collections
    
    
    Tim