RE: DELETE leaving a lock-null resource; was LOCK Scenarios

> I admit that the requirement that the token be used with the GET
> statement is an incompatibility with the old spec, but it is by
> no means complex for clients to handle.

Perhaps I don't understand the proposal. I have provided examples below
which demonstrate how it appears to me that the proposal works. Please let
me know if I have analyzed the situation correctly.

Example #1 -

Hiro is writing up his new web page using Microsoft Word. Word is supposed
to be WYSIWYG but he knows that HTML handling is more art than science. So
he boots up Netscape, which many of his users use, to see how the document
looks in Netscape. Unfortunately the document isn't there anymore. He goes
back to Word, Word insists the document is still there! What is going on?

What has happened is that Word has locked the document but someone else
moved the document. Since Word continued to send in the lock token to the
old resource it appeared to Word that everything was fine. However when Hiro
went to use Netscape, which knew nothing of the lock token, the document was
gone.

Example #2 -

Irit is at work working on a document. Unfortunately people keep popping by
her office every five minutes to ask her questions. She really needs to get
some work done so she decides to go home. However she wants to make sure
that no one messes with her documents while she is going home. So she takes
out a long term lock on the document and then shuts down her computer. She
drives home and logs in from home. She tells her word processor to edit the
document. The word processor tells her that the document is gone! What
happened? She had a lock, who messed with her document?

What has happened is that the lock is still there but someone moved the
document. Since Irit's word processor doesn't know about this move there is
no way for her word processor find out where the document, with her lock
still on it, is. 
	BTW, if the document hadn't been moved then the word processor would
have gotten a lock error when it tried to lock the document, examined the
lock, saw that it belonged to Irit and started to use the lock token.
Because the document was moved the word processor never got the chance to go
through this process.

			Yaron

Received on Sunday, 26 September 1999 03:12:27 UTC