FYI: Distribution and Replication Protocol

FYI,

Marimba, Netscape, Sun, Novell, and At Home have submitted a NOTE to the 
W3C for discussion titled the "The HTTP Distribution and Replication 
Protocol."  This proposal can be found at:

http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-drp-19970825.html

Further discussion of DRP can be found at Marimba's DRP page:

http://www.marimba.com/drp/

Also submitted was the "Generic Diff Format Specification," a binary diff 
transfer format, available at:

http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-gdiff-19970825.html


This proposal overlaps the current and intended functionality of WebDAV in 
the following ways:

1. DRP and WebDAV both have mechanisms for retrieving a listing of a 
collection of resources.  However, while WebDAV only returns a single 
hierarchy level at a time, DRP has a requirement that a listing of a 
consistent configuration of resources be retrievable, and this implies 
encoding multiple hierarchy levels.  DRP stores directory information in a 
single resource, while WebDAV employs an INDEX method.

2. DRP provides a mechanism for identifying a particular version of a 
resource using a content identifier URI which is intended to encode an MD5 
hash (or other guid) which identifies the particular version.  This differs 
from the WebDAV model where each version is an individual resource, with 
its own URL.

3. DRP provides a mechanism for retrieving a difference between two 
versions of a resource by providing the identifiers for two different 
versions of the resource.  This differs from the intent of WebDAV to define 
a DIFF method which would perform a difference between two resources.

The DRP proposal was discussed at the W3C Push Workshop held this past 
Monday and Tuesday.  At present, discussions are being held to determine 
the best forum for work on DRP.  Due to the overlap in functionality, this 
working group was one (of many) suggestions for where DRP work should take 
place.  Other options discussed were a W3C working group, or its own IETF 
working group.

- Jim

Received on Friday, 12 September 1997 15:48:22 UTC