REPORT vs SEARCH

Jim's argument that DASL could be implemented on top of an existing Web
Server, without any DAV features, I find compelling.  In addition, I thought
of a few other reasons:

 - DASL is rather big, and rather 'primary'.  It's not just a part of
another feature, like the reports are part of ACL and part of DeltaV.  As
such, I believe servers will want to advertise support for search directly
in the OPTIONS response.  If Search is just another report, it would seem
wierd to treat it differently.

 - REPORT could become too much of a catch-all.  It shouldn't be.  We need
to resist making REPORT the POST of DAV.

 - It's already implemented as SEARCH in a couple places (including, I
admit, Xythos' implementation).  While I don't consider that argument to
trump the issue, it's certainly a consideration.  If there were real
problems with a separate method with SEARCH I'd agree and push to change
existing implementations -- but there aren't any problems.

Overall, since the arguments for replacing SEARCH with REPORT aren't very
strong arguments, I'd say keep it the way it is.

Lisa

Received on Saturday, 6 October 2001 22:04:55 UTC