RE: Collections and Recursion

Also Judith, the new specification actually makes it easier to deal with
compound documents. One of the discoveries of the arguments over depth
is that compound documents are not collections. Just because something
responds to INDEX, which a compound document can, does not mean it is a
collection. A collection has additional behaviors, such as supporting
addref and delref, which compound documents do not necessarily have. As
such if you copy the URL of a compound document, you copy the entire
document. If, on the other hand, you did an INDEX and got a URL to
chapter 1 of the compound document and then copied that URL, you would
only copy chapter 1.

You need to think it through a couple of times before the logic all
makes sense but then I think you will find it is a more natural way to
manipulate compound documents.

		Yaron

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Jim Whitehead [SMTP:ejw@ics.uci.edu]
> Sent:	Thursday, August 21, 1997 6:47 PM
> To:	'w3c-dist-auth@w3.org'
> Subject:	RE: Collections and Recursion
> 
> Great questions.  Some replies.
> 
> On Thursday, August 21, 1997 6:23 AM, Judith Slein 
> [SMTP:slein@wrc.xerox.com] wrote:
> > I'd like to know more about what happened at Munich relative to
> recursive
> > operations on collections.
> 
> Short answer: recursive operation for copy, move, lock, and delete are
> 
> being moved to a separate specification.  At present, the DAV protocol
> 
> spec. will only specify level 0 operations (or should it be level
> infinity 
> operations?)
> 
> > How will copy, move, delete, lock work for collections in webdav?
> 
> This is the focus of the new specification, which will start using the
> 
> recursive operation descriptions in draft-ietf-webdav-protocol-01.txt
> as 
> its base, as modified by discussion at Orem.
> 
> > What schedule will that separate spec be
> > on?
> 
> This is still TBD, but I hope this spec. will pop out the door a few
> months 
> after the base specification. I still need to work out with Saveen
> Reddy a 
> schedule for development of this document.
> 
> > Will it be developed by the webdav working group?
> 
> Yes.  This is still within our charter -- it's just a spec. 
> packaging/timing issue.
> 
> > I'm especially concerned because recursive operations were one of
> the 
> things
> > that made collections attractive as a way of managing compound
> documents.
> > Recursion would have made it possible to move, copy, etc., an entire
> > compound document in one step -- to treat it as a single object.
> 
> Recursive operations will not be ignored, they will just be developed
> at a 
> slower rate than the base specification.  The intent of this decision
> is to 
> remove a contentious item from the base specification to allow it to 
> progress faster.  What I have been hearing from vendors interested in 
> implementing WebDAV is the need for speed so that WebDAV doesn't miss
> the 
> next round of development cycles.
> 
> This isn't a repeat of SEARCH, which grew so big it needs its own
> working 
> group.
> 
> - Jim

Received on Wednesday, 27 August 1997 18:56:41 UTC