RE: Call for Participation: new internet draft for WebDAV SEARCH method

Q1: Query Schema Discovery is for generic clients that can search any WebDAV
repository. However, the main use of SEARCH seems to be specific
applications that have hard-coded knowledge of specific properties built
into them. Thus, QSD was viewed as something that could be postponed by
applying the rule: "If the spec. is still useful after you take feature X
out, take feature X out of release 1 in the interests of expediency."

Of course you would want QSD in the first or second release of SEARCH.
Otherwise, generic search applications could not reasonably be written. 

That is not the same thing as saying that every repository would be
organized enough to provide a query schema. Providing QSD has to be
optional. Document management systems could easily provide access to the
data dictionary they already have. But other repositories, e.g., file
systems, might not have a centralized query schema. 

For example, in a file system directory containing word processing
documents, suppose the document authors could make up whatever properties
and whatever values for those properties they wanted to when they store the
document. In such a case, the repository would probably not implement a
Query Schema. The server would have to scan all the documents in the
directory to do that, and all the disorganized conflicts would thereby be
exposed. For example, one author might have a document with a company
property spelled "Co.", while another used "Company", while another used
"company" while yet another used "organization". For a particular company,
say IBM, one value for "company" could be "IBM" on one document, while on
another it could be "I.B.M.", while on another document it could be
"International Business Machines".

Query Schemas would be useful in some situations, and should eventually be
included.

Alan Babich

-----Original Message-----
From: Julian Reschke [mailto:julian.reschke@gmx.de]
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2002 9:53 AM
To: www-webdav-dasl@w3.org
Subject: Call for Participation: new internet draft for WebDAV SEARCH
method 


Hi,

The original WebDAV DASL working group doesn't exist anymore, and the last
DASL working draft has expired. After collecting (and partly) resolving
issues for some time, I have been advised by Jim Whitehead (chair of the
WebDAV WG) to change my current version of the draft into an individual
submission and to "re-open" the discussion over here. To avoid confusion,
this draft is simply called "WebDAV SEARCH" (rather than "DASL").

The current (unfinished and unsubmitted) version can be found at:

<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-reschke-webdav-search-latest.html>

The top priorities right now seem to be:

- get together people who have implemented or are planning to implement the
WebDAV SEARCH method in clients and servers
- identify currently open issues and resolve them

In particular I'd like to see discussion around the following topics:

Q1) Should the draft attempt to define Query Schema Discovery for
DAV:basicsearch? Has anybody actually *implemented* QSD?

Q2) Is there any real interest of defining a generic SEARCH framework that
can exist independantly of WebDAV? If not, it could make sense just to
define a REPORT based on property searching, and the complexity of the draft
could be greatly reduced.

Regards,

Julian

Received on Friday, 25 January 2002 17:46:36 UTC