Re: Advanced collections and ordering

Jim Davis wrote:

> I agree that it makes sense to use DAV to implement a message forum, but if
> you think it though I think you'll also see that there are no implications
> for ordered collections.
>
> In my opinion, a server that wished to provide three distinct sorted views
> on one underlying collection would best do it by advertising three distinct
> collections, each supporting exactly one sort,e g.
>
> http://mailserver.com/messages/byDate/
> http://mailserver.com/messages/byAuthor/
> http://mailserver.com/messages/byThread/
>
> >From the standpoint of the client, these would all be read-only
> collections.

Mmm, but this approach requires the server to know that it's being a message
forum; it has to include code to render these ordered collections.  A
general-purpose sorting facility would allow clients to store their messages, set
the Date/Author/Thread properties (OK, so Thread is tricky :-), and have the
server sort by specified properties; this could be done with any server that
supported server-ordered collections.

> But i think that in most cases, the human
> will recognize this anyway, either from the name of the collection
> ("byDate")

Assuming the human speaks English.  Anyway, I wasn't intending that the sorting
mechanism be exposed to the user; you'd click on a sort criterion and see your
messages get reordered, much as in an ordinary mailer.

On the other hand, if this functionality can be done with DASL, perhaps it should
be.  (A nice DASL extension might be a way for the client to tell the server, "I
expect to make this query frequently; you might want to keep an index for it.")

--
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|John Stracke    | My opinions are my own | S/MIME & HTML OK  |
|francis@ecal.com|============================================|
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Received on Tuesday, 13 April 1999 10:20:32 UTC