Re: Hierarchical URLs and Collections (was: Docushare and WebDAV model)

First off, I don't beleve that WebDAV can't have anything to say about the
choice of the namespace shape.  It can (and does) require that URL's ending
in "/" act like collections but can't say what collections exist and what
goes in them.  If a site chooses to put all of their documents into one
collection and all of their "folders" into another, and not allow any to be
created anywhere else that is a perfecly valid choice.  Unfortunately it is
not very helpful for someone trying to get at the site with a generic WebDAV
client.  Requiring that there also be a hierarchical representation is not
something that WebDAV can do.  On the other hand, users of a system probably
will :-)

Mapping the project/folder hierarchy from DM systems onto a tree has a
couple of difficulties that I can see.  First is that objects from the DM
system can appear in the tree in more than one place.  Second is that cycles
can exist.
I don't think WebDAV says anything specifically banning the first, but I
would be curious as to other people's views on this.  The second problem
relates to depth infinity operations and to user navigation.  Some of the
depth infinity operations such as copy and move can be worked out fairly
easily, but PROPFIND is a problem.  In addition, users navigating down
through a cycle can get arbitrarily deep, with arbitrarily long URLs.


John Turner
johnt@cgocable.net

Received on Friday, 14 August 1998 08:33:17 UTC