DAV:gte vs. numerical property values

Hi,

let's consider a dead property "foo", and some resources a, b and c on which
this dead property is defined and has the values "1", "3" and "10".

Consider a DAV:basicsearch with the where clause:

<gte xmlns="DAV:">
  <prop><foo xmlns=""/></prop>
  <literal>3</literal>
</gte>

Which resource will match?

As DAV:basicsearch currently isn't type-aware, the server will have to do a
string comparison, and only the b (with value "3") will match.

Is this really sufficient? It basically means that dead property comparisons
are restricted to strings.

Proposals:

a) If the server happens to have type information for a dead property, it
should try to do a comparison according to the known property type, if the
literal can be parsed into this type. This basically replicates the
behaviour that a client would expect when querying on live properties such
as DAV:getcontentlength, so it could be taken as a simple clarification.

Extended proposal:

b) A client can enforce comparison using a specific data type by specifying
the type in the query, for instance using:

<gte xmlns="DAV:">
  <prop><foo xmlns=""/></prop>
  <literal xsi:type="xs:long">3</literal>
</gte>


Julian


[1]
<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-reschke-webdav-search-latest.html#rf
c.issue.JW16b/JW24a>

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Received on Tuesday, 22 October 2002 07:47:43 UTC