use of attribute to qualify property value

In at least two places, the DeltaV draft protocol (Kaler et al, Jan 20,
1999) uses an attribute value to qualify the value of the property returned
in a PROPFIND.  (The two places I've noticed are 5.2 defaulthistory, which
uses the limit attribute and 5.4 directlineage, which uses the scope
attribute).

This is a little funny, for two reasons

1. As far as I know, WebDAV has never settled whether XML attributes are
part of a property value (with the exception of the xml:lang attribute). A
client can certainly store a property whose value includes attributes, but
it's not clear that the server MUST preserve the attributes.  (Please don't
argue with me about whether it should or should not, all I am saying is
that, to the best of my knowledge, it's an unsettled controversy)

2. It seems weird to me that the value one gets back is affected by the
attribute.  It's not like I expect proxies to be caching the values of
PROPFIND, but I would like some guidance as a client writer about when two
properties can meaningfully be compared.  Clearly, in this case, they can't
if the attributes differ.  Would you propose that, in general, a property
can only be compared if all attributes are exactly the same?  This isn't
unreasonable, but I would like this settled for WebDAV in general, and not
by accidental precedent in DeltaV

best regards 

Jim

ps I'm new to DeltaV, apologies if this has already come up

Received on Monday, 17 May 1999 19:35:05 UTC