RE: collection with ordered members

>The promise to maintain order is a serious burden to implementers. Most
DAV
>servers will most likely be implemented on top of file systems, current
file
>systems do not maintain order so in to return the INDEX results in the
>promised order the server has to read in the entire directory, keeping
it in
>local memory, sort according to the requested order, and then return
it.
>However, without having to worry about order the server can stream the
>response as it reads it, never having to keep more memory around then
what
>is needed for a single entry.

I dunno, Yaron... We have 3 document management systems around here,
with 2 on relational database systems and the 3rd (a Web system, our
"Corporate Technical Memory" you may have heard me talk (email?) about)
due to be switched mainly to a relational database system later this
quarter.

>That is too much work and too much of a performance hit for a feature
that
>no one has ever found compelling enough to even bother implementing.
>Remember, standards follow they do not lead. Given that this feature is
no
>widely implemented it is clearly experimental in nature and should be
>explored using the experimental RFC mechanism, not thrown in to DAV
where it
>will cause implementers endless headaches.

I don't really see the problem, as the actual file data should be able
to be cached (and I would think offhand the order should be too).  The
caching software would need to know that these documents have an order
to them.  You would likely need caching software specialized for DAV.

[...]
>Anyway, it is 1:30 in the morning and I am going to sleep. I will be
>happy to continue to participate in this thread once a draft has been
>submitted.

I look forward to it.
==========================================================
Mark Leighton Fisher          Thomson Consumer Electronics
fisherm@indy.tce.com          Indianapolis, IN
"Browser Torture Specialist, First Class"

Received on Wednesday, 29 October 1997 12:33:04 UTC