RE: Legal operations on members of a Baseline Collection...

   From: Peter Raymond [mailto:Peter.Raymond@merant.com]

   Still seems odd that text buried in the definition of a property of
   a baseline version is defining the behaviour of methods on the
   members of a baseline collection.  But the "MUST have" change is
   certainly an improvement.

The only way to get access to this collection is through the
DAV:baseline-collection property of a baseline, so I'm not sure that
this is reasonably characterized as being "buried" (i.e. you'll have
to read this property definition if you are ever going to access the
baseline collection).

   A better solution would be to add the definition of the Baseline
   Collection to section 10.2 (Advanced Versioning Terms, we currently
   define "Configuration", "Baseline Resource", "Baseline-Controlled
   Collection" etc, but it does not define "Baseline Collection".  I
   guess there is no room for this definition, I think it would solve
   all my issues with baseline collections.

I'd prefer not to define the term "baseline collection" because it is
easy to confuse it with "baseline-controlled collection".  This preference
may be colored by the re-pagination that would be required to add
it now (:-), so it would be worth re-raising the issue when we go
to "draft standard".

   Baseline Collection 
   A Baseline Collection captures the state of the baseline-controlled
   collection at the time the baseline was created.  Particularly, for
   each version-controlled resource in the configuration rooted at the
   baseline-controlled collection a new version-controlled resource
   will be created in the baseline collection that MUST have the same
   DAV:checked-in version and relative name.  Any collections needed
   to create a consistent copy of the configuration namespace should
   also be included.  This collection cannot be modified except by
   checking-out and checking-in a version-controlled configuration.
   At most one member of this collection can have a DAV:checked-in
   version from a given version history.

You'd want to get rid of the sentence beginning "This collection
cannot be modified except by".  A collection identified by a
DAV:baseline-collection property cannot be modified.

   I like the definition because it makes it clear that a Baseline
   Collection captures not only version-controlled resources (as the
   current specification incorrectly hints) but that it also captures
   any collections needed to get to those VCRs (in the namespace).

Yes, I agree that the current definition of DAV:baseline-collection
could make this more explicit (although it does state that the relative
names of the members must be the same, which really does mandate the
introduction of those intermediate collections).

How about the following:

The last sentence of the DAV:baseline-collection is actually
redundant, because it follows from the CHECKIN preconditions.  If
I delete that sentence, I have room to emphasizes the creation of any
needed intermediate collections.  In particular, the revised
definition of DAV:baseline-collection would be:

"This property contains a server-defined URL for a collection, where
each member of this collection either is a version-controlled resource
with the same DAV:checked-in version and relative name as a
version-controlled member of the baseline-controlled collection at the
time the baseline was created, or is a collection needed to provide
the relative name for a version-controlled resource."

Would anyone object to this change?

Cheers,
Geoff

Received on Friday, 28 September 2001 08:32:13 UTC