RE: Don't copy live properties

I think it is too soon for us to make this judgement. I am willing to bet
that once we ban copying live properties we will find out that this too
breaks many scenarios. Its a definite damned if you do, damned if you don't
scenario. Thankfully there is a way out. Ban live properties.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Davis [mailto:jdavis@parc.xerox.com]
> Sent: Thursday, December 31, 1998 12:44 PM
> To: w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
> Subject: Don't copy live properties
> 
> 
> At 08:07 AM 12/23/98 PST, Slein, Judith A wrote:
> >.. the spec's directives about how to treat live properties on
> >COPY are broken ...  The spec says that servers SHOULD copy 
> live properties
> >as live, identically behaving properties (that is, they 
> wouldn't necessarily
> >have the same value at the destination); if they cannot keep 
> the properties
> >live at the destination, they MUST copy them as dead 
> properties or else fail
> >the request.
> 
> >For some properties, where the value could be seriously 
> misleading, it is
> >better not to copy them at all than to copy them as dead properties.
> 
> I agree, this is broken.  As you say, copying lockdiscovery, 
> for example,
> is a bad idea.  
> 
> I propose we drop copying live properties altogether.  If a 
> property is
> live at the destination, the server will already implement it 
> (it will be
> "copied" as an "identically behaving" property for free.)  if it's not
> live, it's better to not copy it at all.
> 
> Can we drop this from the spec (8.8.2)?
> 
> It's also bogus to specify copying a live property "octet for 
> octet", since
> there is no canonical serialized form of a WebDAV property.  So it's
> meaningless to talk about an octet for octet  copy.
> 
> Proposed re-wording:
> 
> 8.8.2     COPY for Properties
> 
>    The following section defines how properties on a resource are
>    handled during a COPY operation.
> 
>    Live properties SHOULD be duplicated as identically behaving live
>    properties at the destination resource.  If a property cannot be
>    copied live, then it MUST NOT be copied.
> 
>    The propertybehavior XML element can specify that properties are
>    copied on best effort, that all live properties must be 
> successfully
>    copied or the method must fail, or that a specified list of live
>    properties must be successfully copied or the method must fail. The
>    propertybehavior XML element is defined in section 12.12.
> 
> 
> Objections?
> 
> 
>

Received on Thursday, 31 December 1998 16:08:07 UTC