Re: WebDAV and Dynamic Content

At 02:20 AM 11/20/99 -0500, Serge Knystautas wrote:

Serge, I take the point of your remarks to be that, all things being equal,
you would prefer a definition of the protocol such that it is very easy to
use, so that even "gorillas" (as in your example) can use it.  I guess we
all would, but it seems to not be possible.

I regret that I do not see any way to make WebDAV that simple.  As Einstein
said "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not more so".

There is an understandable temptation to hope (or at least wish) that
somehow the software agent or server can be make smart enough to "guess"
whether a URL is being used to refer to the "source" of dynamic resource or
the result of executing it.  But I do not think this is possible.

Others have proposed adding a proprietary header that controls the
processing.  But as Roy as explained, this is a bad approach.

Really the simplest thing is to use two distinct URLs for two objects.

If you don't find Roy's explaination (and Brett's elaboration) sufficient,
I will try myself to make the case.  But perhaps you (and others) are now
convinced?

By the way have you been tracking the design discussions around the BIND
method?

As for Exchange, it's really too bad that you guys made the choice you did
without raising it in this forum first.  you could have gotten a lot of
good advice for a very low price.  Well, I suppose it's too late to change
Exchange's behavior.  I just hope no one decided to follow their example.

Received on Sunday, 21 November 1999 11:26:18 UTC