Re: Backpointers

> For example, DAV currently allows
> arbirtrary URIs everywhere, allowing clients to specify operations like
> cross-server copies that we all expect _most_ servers not to support for
> quite some time; restricting the URIs to relative URI paths within the
> server receiving the request would not change the options that a client
> needs to support, however. It also enables a clear and obvious migration
> path for the future.

Not so. First my server does support cross-server copy and move. It was
nearly trivial to implement using GET, PUT, and DELETE using URLs. It might
be slow, but Web publishing absolutely requires it. The development server
is very often not the production server, and many web applications publish
to many servers for load balancing.

Second, even if copy and move didn't go across servers, the semantics might
still change. My server also supports multiple repository backends and
dispatches based on the resource URL. This is one of the main features of
WebDAV in that it lets us use a common protocol for accessing resources
controlled by many collaborating repository managers. This is the essence
of the interoperability promise. So moving a resource from one URL to another
may change the repository manager controlling the resource which will result
in different options being supported by the same server on the same logical
resource. Clients will have to be prepared to handle this.

Received on Wednesday, 7 October 1998 10:46:54 UTC