RE: Inheritance on properties

Bite Shadgar writes:
> I am wondering if anybody let me know, has the inheritance been
> considered on properties of resources in Webdav?

I don't think we ever considered this idea.  The access control
specification has inheritance of access control lists, which are represented
as properties, but this capability is limited just to access control lists.

> Consider you have  a lots of resource with the same properties. If you
> have inheritance, you can
> easily store one copy of properties and it can be inherited to other
> resources with the same properties.

Some issues here:

* Is the inheritance down a collection hierarchy (from a collection to its
members), or up a hierarchy (from a member to its parents), or does there
need to be a mechanism for specifying the inheritance pattern?

* Which takes precedence, the inheritance operation, or a lock? That is, if
A inherits properties from B, and A is locked, what is the effect of a
PROPPATCH on B? Does it succeed, or does it fail, due to the lock on A?

> Indeed, what is preparationed in Webdav if a resource has a property
> with more than one value. I know it is considered in RDF, however I
> think it may be necessary to be a part of Webdav. So that all Webdav
> projects support it intrinsically.  What do you think?

We left this up to the definition for each individual property.  There are
many ways to represent this.

For example:

<authors>
  <author>...</author>
  <author>...</author>
  ...
</authors>

or

<author>
  <elem1>...</elem1>
  <elem2>...</elem2>
  ...
</author>

or

<author>
  <list>
    <li>...</li>
    <li>...</li>
    ...
  </list>
</author>

- Jim

Received on Monday, 27 August 2001 14:43:35 UTC