- From: Sean Shapira <sds@jazzie.com>
- Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 17:14:29 -0800 (PST)
- To: ejw@ics.uci.edu (Jim Whitehead)
- Cc: w3c-dist-auth@www10.w3.org, taylor@ics.uci.edu, ejw@ics.uci.edu
In his draft minutes of the IETF meeting, Jim Whitehead wrote: > LOCKS. > [...] It was observed > that the proposed "read lock" was really a convenience access control > function to modify the read permissions on a resource, and that a read lock > might not really be a lock. More generally, I believe there was discussion regarding whether sufficient distinctions were being made within the DAV effort between access control functionality (designed to ensure changes are made by those who have permission) and database locking functionality (designed to ensure the logical integrity and consistency of all operations performed on possibly changing information). (For a SQL Server perspective on definitions for various kinds of locks, see the answer to question 6.3 of the Sybase FAQ, at e.g. http://www.landfield.com/faqs/databases/sybase-faq/part7.) > MOVE. > There was a thread of discussion concerning how intelligent an operation > "move" should be. Some participants felt that HTTP should recognize the > special nature of HTML media types, and automatically perform some link > maintenance on links which are broken by a move. [...] > However, some participants expressed > serious concerns over allowing a move operation to have side-effects which > could modify the resource being moved, or even modify resources which were > not being moved. These participants stated that what was most important > was being able to know exactly what the consequences of an operation would > be before executing the operation. This highlights the tension between the authoring and versioning communities represented at the meeting. From an authoring perspective, these "assisted move" operations will be required functionality of any competitive product. From a versioning perspective, assisted move operations appear as compound operations requiring the renaming of one document in a repository and the simultaneous modification of several others. Combined with the uncertain WEBDAV terminology regarding locking (and assisted moves would require locking, yes?) this lead some attendees to express skepticism about WEBDAV's chances for success in this area. > FORM WORKING GROUP. > Overwhelmingly, the attendees thought the IETF > should pursue work in this area (the vast majority were in favor, with 2-3 > opposed, and a handful of abstentions). I was opposed specifically because it seemed the tension (conflict?) between the authoring and versioning communities made the formation of a joint working group less likely to achieve ietf objectives than e.g. the formation of separate working groups. Both in the context of web content development and elsewhere, it might be beneficial to have "versioning aware" authoring tools, without having those authoring tools attempt to provide a complete set of versioning functionality. For example, how many users of e.g. Microsoft Word attempt to use its internal versioning capabilities for anything more than casual use? -- Sean Shapira sds@jazzie.com +1 206 443 2028
Received on Tuesday, 7 January 1997 00:25:38 UTC