RE: Ideas: GETSRC & MULTIPUT

I know a little bit about the philosophical design, hope this helps.

The "Translate" header is a bit of a mis-nomer.  You could probably more
accurately call it "Author-Mode" and switch the true/false values.

When Translate is not present, or Translate: F, it means the client is a
browser, or an authoring client in browsing mode.  The HTTP/WebDAV should
therefore apply appropriate transforms, such as generating dynamic content.

When Translate: T is in the request, it means the client is in authoring
mode.  The most clearly affected method is GET because the source is
returned instead of the transformed result, but the header is actually sent
on all requests from the client at this time.  This means that a server is
potentially capable of using the Translate header to decide how to calculate
'getcontentlength' in response to a PROPFIND -- it may even be possible to
calculate the length of the source when Translate is True and the length of
the generated content when Translate is False.

I believe that for many methods (COPY, MOVE) the behaviour is the same
whether Translate is T or F.  Note however that the information about what
mode the client is in is still there, should the server ever need to make a
distinction between two behaviours on the basis of whether the client is
authoring or not.

Obviously this doesn't work directly for CGI scripts or (this is the
Microsoft solution after all) ISAPI.  I think it's possible to turn on
WebDAV access to the files that compose one of these types of Web plugins,
but since the model is more file access than Web access, these would have
different URLs and there might not be a clear way of seeing the link between
the dynamic URL and the source URLs.  Still, there hasn't been clear demand
from customers for shared authoring of these types of things right on the
Web server -- I'd suspect most serious Web programming teams would use a
real source server, perhaps a staging sever, and a production server, all
with different URLs.

Lisa

> -----Original Message-----
> From: w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org
> [mailto:w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Nicholas Atkinson
> Sent: October 30, 2001 8:31 AM
> To: WebDAV
> Subject: Re: Ideas: GETSRC & MULTIPUT
>
>
> Hi there
>
> Is there any documentation available which describes what Microsoft are
> doing with their Translate Header?  (I have tried the archive of this list
> but the search facility is not working).
>
> Does the Apache web server support something similar?
>
> nik
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Julian Reschke" <julian.reschke@gmx.de>
> To: "Clemm, Geoff" <gclemm@rational.com>; "WebDAV" <w3c-dist-auth@w3.org>
> Sent: 29 October 2001 21:35
> Subject: RE: Ideas: GETSRC & MULTIPUT
>
>
> > Geoff,
> >
> > I'd like to see how the DAV:dst in WebDAV can support what Microsoft is
> > doing with their Translate header (namely, having the source and the
> dynamic
> > content at the same URL).
> >
> > See also my comments in
> >
> > <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/2001JulSep/0149.html>
> >
> > Julian
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org
> > > [mailto:w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Clemm, Geoff
> > > Sent: Monday, October 29, 2001 10:18 PM
> > > To: WebDAV
> > > Subject: RE: Ideas: GETSRC & MULTIPUT
> > >
> > >
> > > Why isn't GETSRC just a GET on the DAV:dst of the DAV:source property?
> > > (If it is just a shorthand for this, I'm against the redundant
> marshalling
> > > of this request through a new method).
> > >
> > > As for MULTIPUT, that sounds fine to me, but it should be
> accompanied by
> > > a MULTIGET, which would allow reading of a resource and its
> metadata in
> > > one transaction.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > Geoff
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Jim Whitehead [mailto:ejw@cse.ucsc.edu]
> > > Sent: Monday, October 29, 2001 3:14 PM
> > > To: WebDAV
> > > Subject: Ideas: GETSRC & MULTIPUT
> > >
> > >
> > > I'm interested in the list's thoughts on two ideas for DAV
> improvements:
> > >
> > > The first is to introduce a GETSRC method to support access to the
> > > unprocessed source of a resource. This would decouple the dynamic
> response
> > > of a resource (GET) from its static source (GETSRC).
> > >
> > > The second is to introduce the MULTIPUT method to support "PUT with
> > > PROPPATCH" scenarios. MULTIPUT would accept some subset of multipart
> MIME
> > > packages and atomically write them to the server. This would
> support the
> > > update of a resource and its metadata in one transaction.
> > >
> > > - Jim
> > >
> >

Received on Tuesday, 30 October 2001 13:04:24 UTC