- From: <ccjason@us.ibm.com>
- Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 20:29:17 -0500
- To: "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@kiwi.ICS.UCI.EDU>
- cc: w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
Roy, thanks for what you said in the first part of this note. And whatever you think while reading this, keep in mind that the resource is not the storage thingy on the back-end -- it is the concept being referenced by the originator of the URI. Agreed. I don't understand how the server is supposed to know what the resource is when the user is allowed to create new bindings willy-nilly. Therefore, either the server needs to be told what the resource is when the bindings are created (which doesn't seem likely, since most of the users wouldn't understand the difference) or the definition of DELETE should be changed to reflect the easier-to-grasp notion of removing the binding. Are those the only choices?... Can't we leave the definition of resource suitably vague as we and our predecessors have? If we do I suspect servers will drive a WebDAV compliant definition that content authors on their site will use. Not the opposite. Almost all servers will support the model of flat/dead file or repository object that basically is just an echo of a PUT/GET.provide their own underlying meaning of resource. A server might also offer support for more intelligent objects like servlets or perl scripts and also treat those as resources. The author's job is to encapsulate his concept of a resource within the one of the server's concepts of a resource which is probably a file or some sort of repostiory object. As I just said, most of the time, the server will drive a WebDAV compliant concept of a resource that that the content authors will use. One likely exceptions is the concept of a resource essentially being at the URI. This model doesn't need server support and may not leverage the server model or even necessarily the WebDAV model of resource. An example is, "page_of_the_day.html". Certainly the author could use a proxy resource that essentially gets it's contents from other resources depending on today's date, but it's more likely that the author will just choose to rebind that URI each day. Sure, the casual referencer's concept of the resource will not be the same as the server's, but the right thing happens. Does it matter that the author chose to have one foot in each model? Jason. PS. I hate HTML mail too.
Received on Monday, 17 January 2000 20:30:24 UTC