Subject: Request for feedback: WebDAV property datatype draft

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 22:11:06 +0200

Hi,

we (greenbytes & SAP) have been working with typed WebDAV property 
values for quite some time now. The Internet Draft describing the 
extension has been stable for a long time, the recent changes describing 
mostly optional features such as:

- some per-property flags (protected, hidden)
- property displaynames
- WebDAV SEARCH operators for multivalued properties

Recently I learned that another well-known server vendor (Xythos) is 
going to support the basic parts of the protocol as well.

We have dicussed making the draft a working group deliverably several 
times now (I think last time in spring '2003). As far as I can tell, 
many of us did agree that we should do this, but there has been 
disagreement about the scope (many would like to see property schemas, 
discovery of types, and so on...). Although all these things are 
interesting, they are *hard* to define and to get consensus on. On the 
other hand, the base protocol itself is simple and can exist even in the 
absence of schemas, resource types and other extensions.

Given the time constraints (as a community) that we apparently have, it 
IMHO makes sense to publish an RFC about those things that are already 
well understood and implemented by multiple parties; and then leave all 
the other interesting stuff for future developments (maybe we can get 
back to that once we have RFC2518bis, BIND, REDIRECT and possibly 
LOCKING out of the door).

Therefore I'd like to propose to take
	<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-reschke-webdav-property-datatypes-latest.html>

as a base, removing all nice-to-have-but-non-essential features that 
were added since

<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-reschke-webdav-property-datatypes-02.html>

(being the aforementioned property flags, displaynames, and SEARCH 
operators) and publish this as an "experimental" RFC.

It would be nice if the working group would adopt it; but it's not 
really essential.  Otherwise, publishing it as a private submission as 
"informational" RFC would make a lot of sense (after all, it's a useful 
addition to WebDAV properties, and there already exist independant 
implementations).  Note that in this case, the IETF is going to come 
back to the working group and it's chairs asking whether this 
specification collides with possibly ongoing working group activities; 
thus we should discuss this before; see RFC2026, section 4.2.1).

Best regards, Julian

-- 
<green/>bytes GmbH -- http://www.greenbytes.de -- tel:+492512807760

---

From: Lisa Dusseault <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 13:24:03 -0700

As an OSAF person, I'd like to help out on the datatypes draft because  
we'd like to use multi-value properties at least.  However, as chair, I  
do not believe that this working group has the energy to take on  
another official draft as it may not even complete its existing drafts.  
  There are some energetic people but it's not adding up to sufficient  
input to deal with consensus problems.

I welcome more input on this but keep in mind the participation issue.   
Also don't forget that a new WG can be started and have a good chance  
of drumming up more support, more volunteers.

Lisa

On Jul 9, 2004, at 1:11 PM, Julian Reschke wrote:

> extension has been stable for a long time, the recent changes  
> describing mostly optional features such as:
>
> other hand, the base protocol itself is simple and can exist even in  
> the absence of schemas, resource types and other extensions.
>
> Given the time constraints (as a community) that we apparently have,  
> it IMHO makes sense to publish an RFC about those things that are  
> already well understood and implemented by multiple parties; and then  
> leave all the other interesting stuff for future developments (maybe  
> we can get back to that once we have RFC2518bis, BIND, REDIRECT and  
> possibly LOCKING out of the door).
>
> "informational" RFC would make a lot of sense (after all, it's a  
> useful addition to WebDAV properties, and there already exist  
> independant implementations).  Note that in this case, the IETF is  
> going to come back to the working group and it's chairs asking whether  
> this specification collides with possibly ongoing working group  
> activities; thus we should discuss this before; see RFC2026, section  
> 4.2.1).
>
>
> Best regards, Julian
>
> --