- From: <dlaliberte@gte.com>
- Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 14:19:21 -0400 (EDT)
- To: John Turner <johnt@cgocable.net>
- Cc: w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
John Turner writes: > 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 I didnt think that was true, because it imposes on existing web servers that mere directories would suddenly become collections. However, I think that should be OK, if being a collection doesn't mean servers are required to do any more than they already do to support the collection. Still, it becomes kind of meaningless. > 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 :-) I think there may be a confusion between hierarchical identifiers and collection containment. I am distinguishing them, such that the components of a collection may or may not be accessible via hierarchical URLs. If there were never any hierarchical URLs, that doesn't mean that resources cannot be members of collections; it would only mean you cannot access the components via extensions of the collection URLs. Hierarchial URLs do provide a convenient, more direct access to components of collections, but that is by no means the only way to access components of collections. Another way is to first access the collection and get lists of component URLs. A particular server might want to require the latter approach, perhaps to avoid any dependence that hierarchical URLs impose on the name space, i.e. the resources must be persistently contained within particular collections forever if the hierarchical URL is to be persistent. (There is more to that story if you want to hear it.) WebDAV already supports the notion of references to components of collections, so that is not the question. Use of references certainly means that collection containment does not necessarily correspond to physical containment, but that is true even without references. But furthermore, the existence of references raises other concerns such as containment in multiple collections, and circular references, as John mentioned. But regardless of references, we still have a separate question, which is the original question concerning the use of only non-hierarchical URLs with hierarchical collections. I still have not seen any reason given for prohibiting that combination. It is not sufficient to just say it is merely desirable - there must be some functionality that actually requires it. -- Daniel LaLiberte dlaliberte@gte.com (was: liberte@ncsa.uiuc.edu) liberte@hypernews.org
Received on Monday, 17 August 1998 14:19:51 UTC