- From: Dan Brickley <Daniel.Brickley@bristol.ac.uk>
- Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 01:56:46 +0000 (GMT)
- To: www-rdf-interest@w3.org
- cc: yarong@Exchange.Microsoft.com
RDF IG, Further to the RDF/WebDAV discussions [1] on the RDF Interest Group, here's an interesting set of posts from a WebDAV perspective. Worthwhile reading for anyone trying to get a handle on the background to various WebDAV design decisions, though please bear in mind the Yaron's "this is a personal view" disclaimer below. It's interesting that RDF and WebDAV have made similar decisions w.r.t. inventing concatenation conventions on top of the bare XML Namespaces spec. RDF is more hopeful about dereferencing property URIs than WebDAV, but both felt the need to have a simple URI name for metadata properties, rather than the purer mathematic pair provided by the core XML Namespaces spec... BTW I'm planning an 'RDF IG issue tracking' page, with sections at least for 'RDF Model', 'RDF Schema', 'RDF Syntax', 'WebDAV Interoperability', 'Z39.50 Interoperability', 'XLinks-in-RDF', 'XML Schema Interoperability' as a minimum starting point. More on this separately. My hope is we can start to document more carefully the similarities and differences between the RDF and other information models, respond in a more organised fashion to 'last calls' etc... On this front, I'd like to thank Perry for his RDF/WebDAV comparison work [2] and encourage feedback on his notes from IG members familiar with both WebDAV and RDF. thanks, Dan [1] http://www.w3.org/RDF/Interest http://search.w3.org/Public/cgi-bin/query?mss=simple&pg=q&what=web&filter=lists&fmt=.&q=%2Bwww-rdf-interest+%2Bwebdav [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/2000Feb/0013.html ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 16:47:52 -0800 From: Yaron Goland <yarong@Exchange.Microsoft.com> To: "W3c-Dist-Auth (E-mail)" <w3c-dist-auth@w3.org> Subject: The WebDAV Book of Why - V. Alpha 3 Resent-Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 19:48:58 -0500 (EST) Resent-From: w3c-dist-auth@w3.org The WebDAV Book of Why V.Alpha 3 - 2/17/2000 2:39 PM 1 Introduction This is my personal collection of posts from the WebDAV mailing list. I use this collection to save me time in answering questions about the design of the WebDAV distributed authoring standard. In here you will find answers to everything you ever wanted to know, but were wise enough not to ask, about how WebDAV ended up the way it did. Many of these papers contain histories of how various features were developed. Almost all the histories are wrong. The reason they are wrong is that: a) I have a lousy memory b) I didn't bother to actually research my answers c) All of the above On the other hand I have been reviewing some of the old drafts, meeting notes and mailing lists and there is quite a story in there. Did you know that WebDAV was originally written to use POST? That WebDAV had support for fully distributed searching and eventing? We have all the drafts, all the meeting notes and the entire mail archive. I'm sure there is a researcher out there who would just love to dive in to a fully documented history of the development of a protocol. For more information please contact Jim Whitehead, chief librarian and head researcher of the WebDAV archives. Disclaimer: Nothing said here is official, binding, normative, a standard or representative of working group consensus. The official history of the working group is contained in the meeting minutes, the mailing list and the untold drafts the working group produced. The final word on all standards issues is the RFC and failing that, working group consensus. 2 Changes This is the third Alpha release of this reference. The following new articles were added: Why are WebDAV's XML namespace rules different than the W3C's? <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1999OctDec/0343.html> If you are going to write WebDAV Standards - PLEASE READ THIS <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1999JanMar/0130.html> Thoughts on writing standards that real clients can support or "why the server can just say no" philosophy doesn't work <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1999JulSep/0359.html> Why IDs need to be Opaque Tokens <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1999JulSep/0256.html> Why IE's Web Folders are accessed through File/Open <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/2000JanMar/0247.html> The following article Was Removed: Versioning, Collections and Sources <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1998OctDec/0280.html> 3 Index 3.1 Properties A History of WebDAV's Property Design <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1998OctDec/0074.html> - An explanation of WebDAV's property design, in the form of a fairy tale. The DAV Property/Message Object Model <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1998JulSep/0044.html> - Explains the relationship of WebDAV to XML HTTP Design Issues, lessons from WebDAV's Property and Depth header experiences <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1998OctDec/0303.html> - Learn from our mistakes in WebDAV, read this if you are going to write application protocols Ramifications of WebDAV's property design decisions <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1998OctDec/0302.html> - This post explores the screw ups we made in the WebDAV property design. 3.2 XML Why are WebDAV's XML namespace rules different than the W3C's? <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1999OctDec/0343.html> How WebDAV Uses the Value argument in defining XML elements <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1999JanMar/0113.html> XML Attributes and the WebDAV object model <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1998JulSep/0084.html> - Why WebDAV doesn't use XML attributes 3.3 COPY/MOVE COPY and Methods <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1999JanMar/0096.html> - Discusses all aspects of COPY's behavior but how it deals with properties. COPY and Properties <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1999JanMar/0097.html> - Focuses in on explaining COPY's behavior with properties. Why MOVE isn't really defined as a COPY followed by a DELETE <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1999JanMar/0125.html> Why MOVE Eats Write Locks <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1997JulSep/0177.html> 3.4 Odds and Ends Collections, Resourcetype and Hierarchy in WebDAV <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1998OctDec/0305.html> - Explains the reasoning behind the design of collections and how they interact with the namespace, how hierarchy works, etc. This one is really long but touches on an enormous number of topics. Whatever Happened to the Destroy Header and the UNDELETE method? <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1999JanMar/0111.html> Why Multi-Status is a 2xx Response <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1999JanMar/0128.html> 3.5 Useful Design Heuristics When to Use the Header vs. the Body for Method Arguments <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1998JulSep/0113.html> If you are going to write WebDAV Standards - PLEASE READ THIS <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1999JanMar/0130.html> - Explains how to structure early drafts so as to get maximum consensus in the shortest period of time. Thoughts on writing standards that real clients can support or "why the server can just say no" philosophy doesn't work <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1999JulSep/0359.html> 3.6 General Philosophy Levels of HTTP Nirvana or POST Vs. New Methods <http://xent.ics.uci.edu/FoRK-archive/feb98/0238.html> Why IDs need to be Opaque Tokens <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1999JulSep/0256.html> - This paper explains, in gory detail, why URL Munging is a really bad idea. Why IE's Web Folders are accessed through File/Open <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/2000JanMar/0247.html> - Ever wonder how Microsoft designs UI?
Received on Thursday, 17 February 2000 20:57:32 UTC