IETF 51 and DeltaV Breakout Sessions

I am VERY happy to let you know that the DeltaV specification has been 
approved by our Area Director, Ned Freed, and we will be scheduling an 
IETF-wide last call as soon as possible. We will also be checking with the 
WebDAV and HTTP working groups for any additional feedback. So to 
cellebrate this wonderful progress, and to leverage the momentum, I 
propose that we meet for a DeltaV breakout session all day Tuesday at IETF 
'51. I don't have a meeting place yet, so check the message board for an 
announcement.

 The agenda will be to cover any remaining issues so we are prepared to 
produce another Internet draft after the IETF-wide last call. Please 
submit your issues list to the mailing list soon so we can collect them 
before the breakout session. And thanks to everyone for the hard work that 
produced such a quality specification!

I've also updated the charter to reflect update milestones. It should be 
at http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/deltav-charter.html soon, but I've 
included it below for your review.

Web Versioning and Configuration Management (deltav) 

Last Modified: 12-July-01 

Chair(s):

mailto:jamsden@us.ibm.com

Applications Area Director(s): 

mailto:ned.freed@mrochek.com
mailto:paf@cisco.com

Applications Area Advisor: 

mailto:ned.freed@mrochek.com

Mailing Lists: 

General Discussion:ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org 
To Subscribe: ietf-dav-versioning-request@w3.org 
In Body: subscribe 
Archive: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-dav-versioning/ 

Description of Working Group: 

This working group will define extensions to HTTP and the WebDAV 
Distributed
Authoring Protocol necessary to enable distributed Web authoring tools to
perform, in an interoperable manner, versioning and configuration 
management of
Web resources. 

Versioning, parallel development, and configuration management are 
important
features for remote authoring of Web content. Version management is 
concerned
with tracking and accessing the history of important states of a single 
Web
resource, such as a standalone Web page. Parallel development provides
additional resource availability in multi-user, distributed environments,
allowing authors the choice of making independent changes on the same 
resource
at the same time, later merging together those changes. Configuration
management addresses the problems of tracking and accessing multiple
interrelated resources over time as sets of resources, not simply 
individual
resources. Traditionally, artifacts of software development, including 
code,
design, test cases, requirements, help files, and more have been a focus 
of
configuration management. Web sites, comprised of multiple inter-linked
resources (HTML, graphics, sound, CGI, and others), are another important 
class
of complex information artifacts that benefit from the application of
configuration management. 

The WebDAV working group originally focused on defining version management
capabilities for remote authoring applications. However, it has become 
clear
that while versioning functionality alone is useful for a range of content
authoring scenarios involving one, or a small set of resources, versioning
alone is insufficient for managing larger sets of content. Support for 
parallel
development and simple remote configuration management of Web resources
provides needed functionality for managing larger sets of interrelated 
content
developed by multiple users at different locations. A standard protocol 
for
accesing such services will ensure interoperability between many clients 
and
many servers. 

A sub-group of the WebDAV working group has developed functional 
requirements
for versioning and configuration management of Web content. These 
requirements
encompass the following capabilities, which shall be considered by this 
working
group: 

IN-SCOPE: 

       Naming and accessing resource versions and configurations 
       Creating new revisions of a resource 
       Placing a resource under version and configuration control 
       Parallel development 
       History retrieval 
       Differencing 
       Merging of revisions and configurations 
       Operations on configurations 
       Mapping resource versions and configurations to the URL namespace 
       Versioning support for downlevel HTTP and WebDAV clients 

Further information on these objectives can be found in the document, 
"Goals
for Web Versioning". 

NOT IN SCOPE: 

       HTTP server to server communication protocols 
       Development process management, workflow, or change request 
management 
       Versioning and configuration management via non-HTTP and WebDAV 
protocols. 
       Implementation of functionality by non-origin proxies 

Deliverables 

The following documents are expected to form the final output of this 
working
group. 

     1. A goals document, which describes the high-level functional 
requirements
        for remote versioning and configuration management, including
        rationale. 
     2. A protocol specification, which describes new HTTP methods, 
headers,
        request bodies, response bodies, and WebDAV properties to
        implement the remote versioning and configuration management 
goals. 

Goals and Milestones:

 Oct 99   (Goals) Create final version of distributed versioning and
          configuration management goals document. Submit for approval as
          Informational RFC.

 Oct 99   (Specification, Model) Produce revised model document, and
          distributed versioning and configuration management protocol
          specification. Submit both as Internet Drafts.

 Nov 99   (Meeting, Specification, Model) Meet at Washington, DC IETF and 
hold
          working group meeting to review the model document and
          the distributed versioning and configuration management protocol
          specification.

 Done     (Specification, Model, Traceability) Submit revised model 
document,
          and distributed versioning and configuration management
          protocol specification as Internet Drafts. Submit revised
          traceability document as an Internet Draft.

 Mar 00   (Meeting, Specification, Model) Meet at Adelaide IETF and hold
          working group meeting to review the model document and discuss
          protocol design.

 Apr 00   (Specification, Model, Traceability) Submit revised model 
document,
          distributed versioning and configuration management protocol
          specification, and traceability document as Internet Drafts. 
Hold
          working group last call for comments on all drafts.

 May 00   (Specification, Model, Traceabiluty) Revise model document,
          distributed versioning and configuration management 
specification,
          and traceability document based on WG last call comments, and 
submit
          specification to the IESG for approval as a Proposed Standard 
RFC,
          and submit the model and traceability documents to IESG
          as Informational RFCs.

 Apr 01   Candidate DeltaV Internet Draft version 15 submitted to IETF
          Application Area Directors for initial review

 Aug 01   (Meeting, Specification) Meet at London IETF '51, address 
remaining
          protocol design issues and feedback from initial Area Directors'
          review.

 Nov 01   If needed based on feedback from Area Directors' review, hold an
          additional DeltaV Working Group Last Call

 Dec 01   Document Review for progression by Area Directors


Internet-Drafts: 

Versioning Extensions to WebDAV draft-ietf-deltav-versioning-16.txt

No Request For Comments

Received on Wednesday, 1 August 2001 20:04:32 UTC