RE: data about properties

Indeed, this topic has been investigated at length in the group. The
conclusion we came to is that the issues are so complex and so involved that
it merited its own specification. Once this last call is done we should
start to see proposals for this specification.
	Yaron

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Jim Davis [SMTP:jdavis@parc.xerox.com]
> Sent:	Monday, January 26, 1998 9:20 AM
> To:	w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
> Subject:	data about properties
> 
> At 01:25 PM 1/24/98 PST, Jim Davis wrote:
> >2.5 says "a property name is ... associated with a schema that provides
> >information about the syntax and semantics of the property"
> 
> Just to elaborate on (my own) question:
> 
> As far as I know, DAV does not provide any means whereby a client can
> determine any of the following
>  is property P (on server S) live or dead?
>  if it is live
>    is it readonly?
>    the syntax (a date, an integer, a 1# list of properties, etc
>    intended semantics (stated in natural language, not some formal lang)
> 
> (Well, perhaps it could be done by trial and error!)
> 
> Nor are there conventions whereby clients could assert similar such
> information about dead properties.  (The server would not enforce them,
> but
> at least clients could say what they meant.)
> 
> These are desirable, but not mandatory.  In particular they could go into
> a
> future spec.  I am sure that RDF, to name only one technology, would be of
> sufficient expressive power to handle this.
> 
> The point of this mailnote with regards to the current specification is to
> ask that a sentence of two be inserted to say that this is NOT in WebDAV
> now, (so don't bother looking for it) and perhaps to point to current work
> that might lead to it, because it's a very natural thing to want to have,
> and many readers will likely wonder.
> 
> I should also point out that the DMA API
> <http://www.aiim.org/industry/standards/#dma> *does* provide this kind of
> data about properties, so it's not impossible to design or even implement.
>

Received on Monday, 26 January 1998 21:06:32 UTC