- From: Mark Birbeck <Mark.Birbeck@iedigital.net>
- Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 18:26:12 -0000
- To: "'Jim Davis'" <jrd3@alum.mit.edu>, "WWW WebDAV DASL (E-mail)" <www-webdav-dasl@w3.org>
Jim Davis wrote: > So, just to elaborate, if one does a DASL search and gets > back a result > with some URI and some set of properties, one should not > expect to be able > to do a PROPFIND on that URI to read the same set of > properties. One > should certainly not expect to be able to do a PROPPATCH (the Thai > restaurant would like to increase its rating to five stars > but alas it can not) > > [snip] > > Do you see a problem in this? Let's just say for the moment the justification eludes me! I follow the reasoning. So much so that when I first read the DASL stuff I thought, "aha - just what I need". However, when I began to look at it in relation to what I had already implemented over on the WebDAV side, I started to feel that it didn't quite gel. My major problem is that you can get two different results back depending on how you formulate the question. If I issue a PROPFIND to some server, saying give me the properties of the entry for Siamiam, I get back: <D:response> <D:href>http://ryu.com/siamiam</D:href> <D:propstat> <D:prop> <D:xxx /> <R:location>259 W. Hollywood</R:location> <R:rating><R:stars>4</R:stars></R:rating> </D:prop> </D:propstat> </D:response> The server has some object which is at a known location which contains WebDAV info - is it locked? when was it created?, etc. - as well as info from another namespace. So under normal WebDAV operation I am able to access all properties of an object. Now, if I want to find all objects that are currently locked out to a particular user, or all objects created after a certain date, I am assuming I have to move to DASL. Yet when I do formulate such a query in DASL, I'll get: <D:response> <D:href>http://siamiam.com/</D:href> <D:propstat> <D:prop> <D:xxx /> <R:location>259 W. Hollywood</R:location> <R:rating><R:stars>4</R:stars></R:rating> </D:prop> </D:propstat> </D:response> So how do I delete all items created before October 1st, or unlock everything that is locked out to a particular user? With this configuration an attempt at deleting index entries for all 4 star Thai restaurants would try to delete their web sites! And - to answer your question with another - why shouldn't I be able to do a PROPPATCH? Sure the restaurant shouldn't be able to up their star rating, but that's a security issue. My feeling so far is that this approach caters for one use of DASL, which is to hold indexes to other resources. But by gearing everything to that, don't we lose the ability to search the index entries themselves? To pose it a different way; why should the format of the result of a PROPFIND on a known URI be different to a DASL query on some container that includes that same URI? In other words, there is no notion of "what are the properties of this object", since the answer is "depends on how you ask the question". If I'm missing something feel free to point it out! Best regards, Mark
Received on Monday, 1 November 1999 13:34:54 UTC