Re: Washington IETF Summary

Saveen:

There are and have been many previous attempts to standardize
searching on web servers in the past, including the
Starts work, its recasting as ZStarts (using Z39.50 as a basis
for searching).

Your charter for DASL doesn't mention any attempt to rationalize
the DASL work with any of the other (still ongoing) efforts.

While it would be great if there were a standard for searching
Internet repositories, especially those that can be constructed
using WEBDAV, it's not so great to have two or three different
and incompatible standards.

Can you say more about the attempts to coordinate, or the justification,
if any for an explicit decision not to? 

> 
> The functional needs for DAV search encompass the following
> capabilities, which shall be considered by this working group: 

It is unusual, and, I think, bad form, to define the functional
requirements of scope in the charter of the working group itself.

It might be that you have an initial Internet Draft which defines
your best view of the functional requirements, and that you will
put that document early in the milestones for consensus as an
Informational RFC, but putting the contents itself in the charter
leaves no place to have the discussion and consensus building
around the description of the functional requirements themselves.
That seems to stack the deck too much. What is the relative importance
of "Use of existing querying mechanisms schemes" vs. 
"Definition of a simple query syntax for interoperability" if
there is no existing simple query syntax? Or what is the relative
value of a simple query syntax for interoperability if, in the
name of simplicity, you have to leave out features that are important
for full interoperability?

Larry
-- 
http://www.parc.xerox.com/masinter

Received on Thursday, 18 December 1997 01:35:32 UTC