Clarification on MKCOL needed

How can a WebDAV server support MKCOL if the repository the server is
built upon assigns names to newly created collections (as opposed to
allowing clients to specify the name)?  Put another way, how can a
client create a collection on a WebDAV server using MKCOL if the
collection that gets created must be assigned a URI by the server?
For example, suppose that each collection is assigned an ID that is
unique to the database that underlies the WebDAV server and this ID is
used to identify the collection in a URI (e.g.,
http://foo.com/121/13/4/).  If a client wants to create a new
collection, it must issue a MKCOL request to
http://foo.com/121/13/4/<NEW_NAME>/ but because of the fact that the
server essentially controls the namespace, not the client, the client
can't know what to send for NEW_NAME.

Am I missing some important piece of information here?  I assume that
document management systems might be likely to encounter this kind of
problem.  If so, has anyone dealt with it?

Although it doesn't seem to be explicitly forbidden, I am assuming
that it is inappropriate for the server to ignore the name in the
request-URI and respond with a Location header that identifies the
name assigned by the server.  Though this seems like a possible
solution, it seems contrary to the intent expressed in the spec.  Or
am I wrong in this assumption?

--
Brian Stiles

Received on Friday, 10 September 1999 17:56:02 UTC