RE: Proposal: BIND method

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Whitehead [mailto:ejw@ics.uci.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 1999 8:26 PM
> To: Geoffrey M. Clemm
> Cc: w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
> Subject: RE: Proposal: BIND method
> 
> 
> I discussed this with Roy today, and it's his belief that the 
> definition in
> the HTTP spec. was made assuming that the binding and the 
> resource were
> indistinguishable, and hence "deleting the resource" in the 
> HTTP spec. can
> safely be reinterpreted as "remove the binding of the resource to the
> Request-URI", since a downlevel client would not be able to 
> distinguish
> between a server following this unlink behavior, or the 
> destroy semantics
> that are implied by the current definition.
> 
> Thus I now feel much more comfortable reworking the 
> definition of DELETE in
> the Advanced Collections specification.
> 


I have a couple of questions about the consequences of interpreting DELETE
in advanced collections to mean remove the binding to the request-URI.

What do HTTP servers currently do when they get a DELETE request?  Remove
one binding or remove all bindings?

Would we be asking servers to keep track of which bindings were created with
BIND and which were created in some other way (say with PUT), and interpret
DELETE differently depending on how the binding was created?  Or are we
saying, any URI binding that claims to be compliant with Advanced
Collections (no matter how that URI binding was created) must interpret
DELETE as . . .

If we rework the definition of DELETE, what impact does this have on the
meaning of MOVE?

--Judy

Judith A. Slein
Xerox Corporation
jslein@crt.xerox.com
(716)422-5169
800 Phillips Road 105/50C
Webster, NY 14580

Received on Monday, 12 April 1999 13:37:55 UTC