- From: Gary Cowan <Gary.Cowan@Tally.Hummingbird.com>
- Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 13:24:30 -0400
- To: "'Julian Reschke'" <julian.reschke@gmx.de>, Gary Cowan <Gary.Cowan@Tally.Hummingbird.com>, DAV <w3c-dist-auth@w3.org>
Fair enough -----Original Message----- From: Julian Reschke [mailto:julian.reschke@gmx.de] Sent: Monday, April 08, 2002 1:14 PM To: Gary Cowan; DAV Subject: RE: WebDAV property schema lookup > From: w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org > [mailto:w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Gary Cowan > Sent: Monday, April 08, 2002 6:53 PM > To: 'Clemm, Geoff'; DAV > Subject: RE: WebDAV property schema lookup > > > Server defined(live) properties are supported in that they can be queried, > but there is no methodology that allows users to manipulate these > properties > >from disparate WebDAV clients. Well, there is. What you don't have is an interoperable way to *discover* them (and their datatypes, descriptions). > One of the characteristics of most if not all enterprise DM > systems is that > they are highly customizable. Thus the metadata properties for documents > managed by the system can and quite often due change from site to > site, and > obviously change from industry to industry. For instance a law > firm requires > different metadata properties than a manufacturing firm. Thus one needs a generic schema-based protocol that allows discovery of mandatory properties and their types. This is what Microsoft Sharepoint already implements. > I suppose the holy grail would be to have WebDAV clients > construct a dynamic > properties dialog. This may not be practical in which case a redirection > mechanism or a UI container such as a browser window could > possibly be used. > I am just thinking off the top of my head right now. I understand this is > not an easy issue to resolve. If it can be resolved then WebDAV could > potentially completely replace hardwired integration with desktop > applications. It certainly can be solved (without changing WebDAV), but it requires a lot of work. > -----Original Message----- > From: Clemm, Geoff [mailto:gclemm@rational.com] > Sent: Sunday, April 07, 2002 9:59 PM > To: DAV > Subject: RE: WebDAV property schema lookup > > > From: Gary Cowan [mailto:Gary.Cowan@Tally.Hummingbird.com] > > This situation illustrates a fundamental weakness with WebDAV in > respect to enterprise document management systems. The WebDAV > philosophy assumes that the client is controlling the properties of > a resource/document and the server mearly acts as a store for the > property information. > > That is incorrect. WebDAV explicitly supports both "dead" > (client-defined) > and "live" (server-defined) properties. > > Wheras a DM server maintains extensive metadata for a given > resource especially when vertical market applications have been > built on top of the DM system. > > Yes, WebDAV was designed with this in mind. > > WebDAV does not provide a methodology by which this metadata can be > exposed. > > Perhaps you could explain what you have in mind as "a methodology > by which this metadata can be exposed"? > > As such DM systems must still construct proprietary client > applications causing users to perform authoring in the authoring > tool while performing DM specific actions in the DM client. > > As is the case for versioning systems. To deal with this problem, we > defined an interoperable set of live properties (and a few new > methods) to provide authoring tools with a mechanism for interacting > with a wide range of versioning systems. The WebDAV protocol proved > to be very amenable to this kind of extension. > > At this point in time it still makes more sense for DM systems to > construct tight integration mechanisms within the context of the > authoring application. This gives the DM system the ability expose > its own metadata to the user during document creation/editing. > > Yes, until you agreed on an interoperable set of DM live properties, > each client will need a custom integration with each server. > > WebDAV is a very attractive protocol but this one limitation is > inhibiting > its extensive use within the enterprise DM community. > > The only group that could define an interoperable set of properties > for enterprise DM is the enterprise DM community itself. I encourage > you to do so. > > Cheers, > Geoff >
Received on Monday, 8 April 2002 13:25:04 UTC