Re: Possibly Naive Question -Reply

All:

(I was out most of last week, so this my first real opportunity to respond.)

> From srcarter@novell.com Mon Sep 23 21:41:49 1996
[...]
> 
> No, there is much more at stake here. We are talking about developing
> the protocol for managing documents on the Web. This involves access
> to a variety of sources, only one of which is the traditional file system.
> Of further interest is access authentication (notice I did NOT say ACL)
> and document privacy (although this is a very sticky problem, see my
> comments earlier today on the list server).

The only issue I want to raise is the following -- must the distributed
authoring be done with a single protocol or can a collection of protocols
be employed to accomplish the task?

> "Generation X" is going to require the secure and authenticated sharing
> of documents to move various projects ahead. Traditional document
> management system (DMS) functions like check-in, check-out, document
> control, version control, etc. must be supported as well as the simple file
> system access.

Is it an absolutely necessary to support traditional document management
systems?  If there is a solution that solves all of the problems being
addressed by a traditional DMS and does more, couldn't we skip the
traditional DMS solution?  This is not idle speculation on my part.
In my day-to-day activities, I use a distributed document management
system that has local file locks, but no global (remote) locks.
(Actually, there is one global lock, but it could easily be removed.)

-Wayne

> -src
> Steve Carter
> Novell
> 
> > >>> Wayne C. Gramlich <gramlich@bigbang.eng.sun.com> 09/20/96 03:18pm >>>
> [...]
> > All:
> > 
> > I just recently subscribed to the w3c-dist-auth@w3.org mail list.
> > 
> > After browsing the archives and meeting minutes for a while.
> > After reading Jim Whitehead's "Requirements on HTTP for Dist. Editing",
> > I found myself asking the question, "To a first approximation,
> > aren't we just reinventing a file system protocol (e.g. NFS,
> > Andrew, etc.)?"  Did I miss something important?  (Please, no
> > flame responses... I was not present at either of the first two
> > WG meetings, so I may be missing some important implicit context.)
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > -Wayne

Received on Monday, 30 September 1996 14:32:13 UTC