Comments on the "new" 2518

It seems that the definition of Move, Copy, and Delete have been changed
and the change is not backwardly compatible.  In the old spec the entire
operation succeeded or failed, now the spec says do your best.  I am
"ok" with this on a COPY, but I hate it for Move and Delete.  Pretend I
have a directory with 4 objects I can see in it and 1000 I can't, doing
a Delete will simply destroy the stuff I have access to and not the
entire tree.  This could be very confusing to the user especially if
there are resources they can't even SEE in the collection.  (I could
live with delete operating like this, although I find it confusing in
some circumstances)  Move IMHO needs to be all moved or not.  Leaving a
person with half of a move is almost always a terrible thing.  In fact a
half completed move will end up with MULTIPLE collection resources on
the server (which could be illegal on the server).  Thus the MOVE is
really doing a COPY then DELETE except that I would guess most people
want things like creation dates to be preserved.   Has anyone been happy
when a MOVE completes half way ever in their life??  A move should
succeed or fail.

Received on Thursday, 2 March 2006 01:45:49 UTC