Use of attributes

Is there some reason why DeltaV deviates from every prior instance of WebDAV
property representation in XML? Not only does the current syntax make
unnecessary use of attributes, which DAV has traditionally discouraged, but
it reinvents something for which we already have a mechanism in DAV.

To be consistent with how 2518 does PROPFIND, PROPPATCH, etc. I would have
expected:
  <D:supported-live-property-set xmlns:D="DAV:"
xmlns:x="http://www.xythos.com/schemas/StorageServer"/>
     <D:getcontentlength/>
     <D:getcontentlanguage/>
     <x:quota/>
     <x:size/>
     ...
  </D:supported-live-property-set>

But the DeltaV draft requires the following syntax:
  <supported-live-property-set>
     <supported-live-property name="getcontentlength" namespace="DAV:"/>
     <supported-live-property name="getcontentlanguage" namespace="DAV:"/>
     <supported-live-property name="quota"
namespace="http://www.xythos.com/schemas/StorageServer"/>
     <supported-live-property name="size"
namespace="http://www.xythos.com/schemas/StorageServer"/>
     ...
  </supported-live-property-set>

Is there some merit to doing things this way that isn't immediately obvious?
The DeltaV syntax is rather more bloated and far less obvious. Moreover, it
makes it impossible for people to reuse the code they already have for
parsing DAV property lists. This is not a feature.

Aside from consistency and stylistic considerations, the syntax in the draft
is just plain broke. The DTD for supported-live-property set hardwires the
namespace to DAV:

<!ATTLIST supported-live-property namespace NMTOKEN "DAV:">

This makes it impossible to render vendor-specific extensions (thus
rendering my above example technically illegal). I assume this is an error
since just yesterday Geoff claimed that vendor-specific extensions were to
appear in supported-live-property-set.

Lisa

Received on Saturday, 4 August 2001 01:33:43 UTC