RE: draft-reschke-webdav-search-05 - a few questions on the draft

Julian, thanks for your response.

However I do need to understand a few things...

Lets say I have a hierarchical collection and lets suppose root collection 
is 'A' and 'A' contains collections 'B', 'C' and 'D'.

Lets say collection 'B' has properties 'prop1', 'prop2', 'prop3'.

Collection 'C' has properties 'prop1', 'prop2'

Collection 'D' has properties 'prop3', 'prop4'.

I send a search request with scope as 'A' and depth as infinity what would 
be the result of such a search?

To be fair the question is open-ended to a certain extent but it is not 
clear to me from reading the DASL draft as to what the behavior of the 
server will be in this scenario.

As far as I can see this seems to be a valid organization of resources.

Based on my understanding of WebDav specification, I can send a PROPFIND 
request on 'A' without any issues.

To me the behavior on multiple scopes should be somewhat similar to what the 
response would be in the above scenario.

Given the above statement, my thoughts are that the server already needs to 
handle to a large extent the issues w.r.t to multiple scopes.

I could see potential issues if the say collection 'col1' and 'col2' has 
properties 'prop1' and 'prop1' on 'col1' is totally different from 'prop1' 
on 'col2' (col1 and col2 are different URIS). However given the fact that 
properties are in a flat namespace and property names are universally unique 
identifiers it does not seem to be an issue.

I guess I am missing something here and would appreciate if somebody can 
enlighten me...

thanks,
prakash

>From: "Julian Reschke" <julian.reschke@gmx.de>
>To: "yamuna prakash" <yamunap@hotmail.com>, <www-webdav-dasl@w3.org>
>Subject: RE: draft-reschke-webdav-search-05 - a few questions on the draft
>Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2003 13:37:22 +0200
>
>
>Hi,
>
>you are of course right about why sending multiple requests and compiling a
>single result is hard for a client. However for the same reasons, it isn't
>simple for the server as well. The goal of the DAV:basicsearch grammar is 
>to
>provide a very small set of functionality that will be available across
>*all* servers (therefore, support for it is REQUIRED). Thus, adding a
>requirement that is unlikely to be implementable by everybody isn't going 
>to
>fly.
>
>On the other hand, we *do* have the choice of *allowing* a server to 
>support
>multiple scopes. In this case we'd still need to define how this relates to
>sorting, ranking and result truncation. So please make a proposal for
>language that we could add to section 5.4 to define this.
>
>Regards, Julian
>
>
>--
><green/>bytes GmbH -- http://www.greenbytes.de -- tel:+492512807760
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: www-webdav-dasl-request@w3.org
> > [mailto:www-webdav-dasl-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of yamuna prakash
> > Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 5:24 PM
> > To: www-webdav-dasl@w3.org
> > Subject: RE: draft-reschke-webdav-search-05 - a few questions on the
> > draft
> >
> >
> >
> > Another possible usecase is pagination! Consider I restrict the
> > results to
> > top 500 documents (say sorted by relevance). However I would paginate 
>the
> > results into say 10 pages (50 per page). I could issue the first
> > search to
> > identify the documents and issue another search to retrieve the
> > data for the
> > first 50 documents identified by the first search. I could then
> > send this to
> > the client while I continue building the remaining 9 pages
> > asynchronously.
> > The chances that end-users would click beyond the first page is very 
>low.
> > However I cannot preclude the possibility. The reasons for pagination 
>are
> > well established and doing it the way mentioned here I would think would
> > improve the response time (although there are a lot of things that could
> > prove me wrong especially the issuing multiple search requests).
> >
> > [Note: I am not saying DASL should support pagination but instead that 
>it
> > would seem to preclude the possibility]
> >
> > Coming back to the searching in different collections use-case, issuing
> > multiple search requests I believe not only places a huge burden on the
> > client but I am not sure I like the performance characteristics
> > either. For
> > example even considering that the client can build the
> > consolidated search
> > results, it seems to me to be accurate the client cannot make use of the
> > max-results feature in a very efficient manner. Lets say we want
> > to present
> > the end-user the top 500 documents. If I have sort clause then it
> > seems to
> > me the max-results clause goes pretty much out of the window.
> > (ex:consider
> > sorting by date you need the most recently modified documents, in
> > which case
> > it not possible to apply max-results at all on the individual search
> > requests.) If I have to retrieve the entire result sets and then
> > build the
> > consolidated resultset and apply max-results that to me would
> > seem to have
> > horrendous performance characteristics.
> >
> > [I am guessing Julian had all these issues in mind when she said its not
> > trivial:)]
> >
> > prakash
> >
> > >From: "yamuna prakash" <yamunap@hotmail.com>
> > >To: www-webdav-dasl@w3.org
> > >Subject: RE: draft-reschke-webdav-search-05 - a few questions on
> > the draft
> > >Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 07:25:18 +0000
> > >
> > >
> > >Actually I guess searching from the root might not be an option
> > if I have
> > >to exclude certain collections from the search... in which case it 
>seems
> > >like the client has to do a whole host of things if it is to present 
>the
> > >search results in a consolidate manner to the end-users.
> > >
> > >prakash
> > >
> > >>From: "yamuna prakash" <yamunap@hotmail.com>
> > >>To: www-webdav-dasl@w3.org
> > >>Subject: RE: draft-reschke-webdav-search-05 - a few questions
> > on the draft
> > >>Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 07:11:55 +0000
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>Currently we have a use case where in we need to search under 
>different
> > >>collections and then build a consolidated search result and
> > present it to
> > >>the user. We would like to avoid searching from the root with the
> > >>possibility of having to specify infinite depth, to ensure the
> > search does
> > >>not take too much time. As Elias mentioned in his email, this can be
> > >>achieved by issuing multiple requests, but as Julian mentioned this of
> > >>course opens us up to the issue of what having to manage top
> > >>(max-results), sorting, etc i.e. in effect the client having to build 
>a
> > >>layer on top of DASL.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>I am quite new to DASL and WebDAV and in fact I am still
> > finding my way so
> > >>to speak.
> > >>
> > >>Given the above fact, my next question might sound incredibly 
>stupid...
> > >>but...
> > >>
> > >>if each collection has different properties ( I am not sure if this is
> > >>possible) and if each collection acts as a node in a tree, I am
> > curious as
> > >>to how searching within multiple scopes would be different from
> > searching
> > >>in a tree with arbitrary depth?
> > >>
> > >>Is it the case that all collection nodes are consistent (i.e. have the
> > >>same properties) and thus searching within multiple scopes is a
> > different
> > >>beast?
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>thanks,
> > >>prakash
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>>From: "Julian Reschke" <julian.reschke@gmx.de>
> > >>>To: "Wallmer, Martin" <Martin.Wallmer@softwareag.com>,"'yamuna
> > prakash'"
> > >>><yamunap@hotmail.com>, <julian.reschke@gmx.de>
> > >>>CC: <www-webdav-dasl@w3.org>
> > >>>Subject: RE: draft-reschke-webdav-search-05 - a few questions on the
> > >>>draft
> > >>>Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 08:28:46 +0200
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>>Correct.
> > >>>
> > >>>Keep in mind that allowing multiple issues may be more complex than 
>you
> > >>>think. For instance, it's trivial to just repeat the same query for 
>the
> > >>>different scopes, but how does this affect 
>sorting/ranking/max-results?
> > >>>
> > >>>Julian
> > >>>
> > >>>--
> > >>><green/>bytes GmbH -- http://www.greenbytes.de -- tel:+492512807760
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >>_________________________________________________________________
> > >>Get Married!  http://www.bharatmatrimony.com/cgi-bin/bmclicks1.cgi?74
> > >>Search from 7 lakh Brides & Grooms.
> > >>
> > >
> > >_________________________________________________________________
> > >Reconnect with old pals. Relive past joys.
> > >http://www.batchmates.com/msn.asp All it takes is a click!
> > >
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Reconnect with old pals. Relive past joys.
>http://www.batchmates.com/msn.asp
>All it takes is a click!
>

_________________________________________________________________
Buy now! Receive a gold coin on Dhan Teras. 
http://server1.msn.co.in/features/general/dhanteras/index.asp Celebrate 
prosperity!

Received on Monday, 6 October 2003 00:27:48 UTC