Re: Collections

Thanks for your background on the DRP index.

The current version of the WebDAV protocol specification, which includes
collections, can be found at:
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/authoring/protocol/draft-ietf-webdav-protocol-02.txt


>> I think what is really desirable for (2) is for the client to be able to
>> specify in an INDEX request what information it wants about the members of
>> the collection.  Collections are used for lots of different purposes, and
>> different properties of the members will be useful in different contexts.
>
>Right. That would be ideal.
>
>> However, this flexibility would make it impossible for the index to be
>> stored as a file, as DRP suggests -- it would have to be generated in
>> response to the client's request.
>
>I'm not sure why that is so. Couldn't you generate a file containing
>a DRP flavored collection? I would really like to stay away from
>defining
>new HTTP methods if at all possible.
>
Yes.  I was just looking for a single approach that would let you get the
DRP information about each member of the collection, or any other set of
properties for each member of a collection.  If you want it to be really
open-ended, letting the user-agent specify any set of properties it likes,
then you can't have a URL for each possible set of properties, so some
extension to HTTP will be needed.

--Judy
Name:			Judith A. Slein
E-Mail:			slein@wrc.xerox.com
Internal Phone:  	8*222-5169
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Received on Wednesday, 17 September 1997 13:29:53 UTC