Re: Ordered collection scenarios?

I don't believe that the rationale for ordered collections is that it makes
it "easier" to perform any tasks.  I think the rationale is really this:

It's useful to standardize on a single way to set / get ordering so that
different applications / services operating on the same collection don't
need out of band agreements about how to manage and examine its order. 

Scenarios for the rationale:

The XYZ Corporation is running a mix of different WebDAV servers, and
different departments use a variety of authoring tools and browsers.  Each
department in XYZ produces its own product collaterals, which are typically
compound documents consisting of sequences of page images.  

If we do not standardize on one way to set / get ordering, each server
could implement something different, and the authoring and browsing tools
would have to know how each server implements ordering, and check which
server it is talking to before operating on any compound document.  One
server might support a property on collections called Order, whose value is
an ordered list of URLs of its members.  Another server might allow
multiple orderings of the same collection, or might use a property called
Sequence.  Another might construct a linked list by supporting Prev and
Next properties on members of collections, with the URLs of the previous
and next members of the collection as their values.

Or the servers might not directly support ordering at all, but the
authoring applications support ordering entirely on the client side.  Then
any browsing tools (or other authoring tools) would have to know which
authoring tool had created the ordering if it is to be able to interpret
the ordering information available.

At 04:09 PM 12/26/97 PST, Jim Whitehead wrote:
>
>Can someone please describe some scenarios of use for ordered collections? 
> Not only will this be needed for the scenarios document, but it will help 
>me shake the niggling feeling that we still don't have a solid rationale 
>for inclusion of ordered collections capability.
>
>I'd really like to be able to finish the sentence that begins:
>
>  "The WebDAV protocol needs capability for ordered collections because 
>..."
>
>To date, the best rationale I've heard is:
>
>The WebDAV protocol needs capability for ordered collections because it 
>makes certain document management and versioning functions significantly 
>easier to perform using the protocol.
>
>If this is indeed true (and I suspect it is), then it should be easy to 
>briefly describe one or two of these functions (and existing products which 
>perform such functions). Jim, Mary, Ellis (others?) - care to take a stab 
>at this?
>
>- Jim
>
>
>

Received on Thursday, 8 January 1998 09:28:24 UTC