WebDAV resources must be in collections? (CONSISTENCY)

This is the CONSISTENCY issue in http://www.webdav.org/wg/rfcdev/issues.htm.

RFC2518 says:

"  An HTTP URL namespace is said to be consistent if it meets the
   following conditions: for every URL in the HTTP hierarchy there
   exists a collection that contains that URL as an internal member.
   The root, or top-level collection of the namespace under
   consideration is exempt from the previous rule."

Roy Fielding - http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1998OctDec/0155.html:

"There is no need for that requirement and it
is the root of many terminology issues.  Any individual resource is
capable of being or not being DAVable, as determined by either the
capabilities described by an OPTIONS response"

I've been thinking of a use case for WebDAV resources that may not 
be in WebDAV-capable collections.  The SIMPLE WG has discussed 
making Buddy lists be (in one model) a WebDAV resource.  This would 
mean that the buddy list could be locked, unlocked, could support
PROPFIND and PROPPATCH, could support the basic WebDAV properties 
to know when the content changed and what the ETag is.  It could 
have an owner and support the ACL method and the acl property.

Should we remove this consistency requirement from RFC2518bis?

Lisa

Received on Tuesday, 7 October 2003 20:46:14 UTC