RE: Advanced collections and ordering

In the document management world (and in other environments I'm sure), it is very useful to have server-maintained orderings (indexes).  As these orderings are generally optimized by use of an index, they are the best orderings to use.  Therefore, I believe it is extremely worthwhile to expose these orderings to the client so the client can pick from those orderings intelligently.

At the very least the client ought to know what ordering is being used if none is specified but one is used by default by the server.

>>> "Slein, Judith A" <JSlein@crt.xerox.com> 04/12/99 07:57AM >>>
The advanced collections design team has been discussing what to do about
server-maintained orderings.  One thing we could say is that a collection
with a server-maintained ordering is just an unordered collection as far as
the protocol is concerned.  If the client doesn't specify an ordering, the
server does whatever it wants, and if that happens to be alphabetizing by
name, that's no different as far as the protocol is concerned than if the
order is random.

Or we could go a step beyond this and provide some way for the server to
declare what its default ordering is -- to let the client know that it can
count on responses to PROPFIND always listing collection members
alphabetically by name.

Or (if there are real scenarios to support this) we could go further and
allow clients to choose from a list of available server-maintained
orderings.

Do you know of applications that need this third kind of support, or servers
that really offer clients a choice from among multiple server-maintained
orderings?  Thanks for any help you can provide.

--Judy

Judith A. Slein
XR&T/Xerox Architecture Center
jslein@crt.xerox.com 
8*222-5169


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Max Rible [mailto:max@glyphica.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 1999 6:45 PM
> To: w3c-dist-auth@w3.org 
> Subject: RE: Advanced collections and ordering
> 
> 
> 
> While there is no need to explicitly define server-maintained 
> orderings
> for the advanced collections protocol, it would be good to 
> make explicit
> the interaction of the protocol with server-maintained orderings, just
> as there are explicit provisions for future standards involving strong
> references without actually nailing them down.
> 
> -- 
> %% Max Rible %% max@glyphica.com %% 
> http://www.amurgsval.org/~slothman/ %%
> %% "Before 
> enlightenment:  sharpen claws, catch mice.                   %%
> %%  After enlightenment:  sharpen claws, catch mice."         
>    - me   %%
>

Received on Monday, 12 April 1999 10:18:23 UTC