RE: PROPFIND vs REPORT

A good chance, I suppose, to clarify what I think:

 - PROPFIND should be used to ask for a list of properties on a resource, or
a set of resources, including version-controlled resources or version
resources.  My last mail had a suggested syntax that does not break RFC2518.
This involved adding only one XML element, very simple extension to
PROPFIND.  Additionally, the response will be entirely compatible with 2518,
no different than an existing PROPFIND response.

 - If that means that CORE versioning servers do not have to support REPORT,
so much the better.  It will make it easy for simple servers to implement
CORE.  To this end, I suggest that CORE should not require REPORT support
but instead require support of a simple <version> specification element in
the PROPFIND request body.

 - REPORT is preferable, when EITHER the request information is not easily
marshalled via PROPFIND,  OR the response format cannot be a
straight-forward listing of <href> and property sets (propfind response).
E.g. merge-preview-report, compare-report, version-selector-url-report
(from deltav draft 10)

-- Lisa


-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-dav-versioning-request@w3.org
[mailto:ietf-dav-versioning-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Jim Amsden
Sent: Monday, December 18, 2000 8:01 AM
To: ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
Subject: PROPFIND vs REPORT



<greg>PROPFIND is for fetching properties. REPORT is for fetching
information
about the server, its layout/organization, for multiple disparate resources
and data, etc.</greg>

The spec currently says REPORT is for fetching properties of a resource that
require additional parameters, PROPFIND for properties that don't require
parameters. So why not just add the parameters to PROPFIND?

We're getting many requests to reduce the number of methods. While I'm not
always sympathetic to this, REPORT looks like a good candidate. The WebDAV
working group seemed to prefer this approach. What do others think?

Received on Monday, 18 December 2000 14:28:47 UTC