Re: Issue: ALLPROP_AND_COMPUTED

Nah, that is a bit too extreme. There are clients that may not be able to
interpret all the properties, but still needs to retrieve them. These are
clients that deal with arbitrary properties as blobs.

allprop is needed to avoid a multiple-trip to fetch names then values. Let's
also consider what would be needed if you're trying to do an allprop on a
tree. You would need to issue a PROPFIND/propname with a Depth:1, then issue
N PROPFINDs to get each set of properties from the resources. That is just
*way* too burdensome.

The alternative is a PROPFIND/allprop with Depth:1 as a single fetch for the
properties of a collection and its members.

Cheers,
-g

On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 02:36:39PM -0400, Clemm, Geoff wrote:
> I believe it is simpler and more desireable to deprecate the use of allprop
> in all situations, not just Depth:infinity.
> 
> Cheers,
> Geoff
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Whitehead [mailto:ejw@cse.ucsc.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 2:20 PM
> To: WebDAV WG
> Subject: Issue: ALLPROP_AND_COMPUTED
> 
> 
> This issue is currently stated as:
> 
> If a server has some computed properties which are expensive to compute,
> then PROPFIND allprop, especially PROPFIND allprop with Depth infinity can
> be an expensive operation.  There should be an implementation note added to
> the document noting this problem.  Suggestion that servers might want to be
> conservative in their implementation of such compute expensive properties.
> Clients should only perform PROPFIND allprop when necessary, not by default.
> 
> It was raised by Ken Coar at the Advanced Collections breakout at the
> Orlando IETF meeting.
> 
> But, since that time there has been a substantive discussion of this issue,
> begun by Lisa Dusseault, starting at:
> 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/2000OctDec/0034.html
> 
> My understanding of the rough sentiment of the working group is:
> 
> 1) PROPFIND allprop requests with Depth infinity should be deprecated. That
> is, PROPFIND allprop with Depth infinity will remain in the WebDAV
> Distributed Authoring Protocol, but there will be a requirements added that
> new clients MUST NOT use this capability.  When existing clients are
> revised, they SHOULD be rewritten to avoid using PROPFIND allprop Depth
> infinity requests. This will only apply to PROPFIND allprop with Depth
> infinity -- PROPFIND allprop for Depth 0 and 1 will still be OK.
> 
> 2) The default behavior of PROPFIND will be changed so it is Depth 0, not
> Depth infinity.
> 
> - Jim

-- 
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/

Received on Thursday, 26 April 2001 01:47:28 UTC