Subject: Locking spec

From: Daniel Florey <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 2004 12:31:50 +0200

Hi,
first of all I want to thank Julian for his great work on the webdav
protocols. His page is *the* resource regarding WebDAV for many
developers working on the apache Slide project.
Now I want to decrease my popularity and ask for forgiveness in advance
by making the following proposal:
I'd like to add transaction support to the locking spec as described in
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wss/wss/_esdk_arch_webdav_transactions.asp

I know that this is thew wrong place for long term transactions as
everyone would prefer a method called TRANSACTION or something similar,
but as IIS and Exchange are using the LOCK method to implement
transactions, I'd like to see it in the locking spec. Maybe it would be
an idea to have some basic locking features (current locking spec) and
advanced locking (transactions)?
My personal goal is to achieve full Exchange/IIS compatibility
regarding  WebDAV in the distant future with the Slide project. We are
currently working on a full JCA implementation working with Slide and
hopefully with IIS/Exchange. As this is open source, everyone could use
this Connector lateron, if transactions are support in the "locking" way.
We have already implemented full exchange compliant notifications, but
this is a different story...

Regards,
Daniel

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From: Geoffrey M Clemm <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 10:41:43 -0400

Daniel points out one of the important reasons for not putting
transaction support in the locking spec, i.e., transactions are
semantically very different from locks.  The fact that IIS/Exchange
chose to syntactically overload the LOCK method with transaction
support does not provide a compelling reason to bundle them into
a single spec (even if we do eventually decide to standardize on
that syntactic overload).

Another reason for not putting transaction support into the
locking spec is that the maturity of those two proposals is very
different: the locking spec is clarifying/updating existing
standard behavior, while transactions would introduce new WebDAV
semantics/behavior.  The way IIS/Exchange defines/supports transactions
will certainly be an important factor in any WebDAV transaction support,
but will not be an overriding factor.

So I encourage you to try to organize a design team for standardizing
WebDAV transaction support, but I'm against extending the domain of
the locking spec to include transaction support.

Cheers,
Geoff

Daniel wrote on 06/03/2004 06:31:50 AM:

> http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-
> us/wss/wss/_esdk_arch_webdav_transactions.asp
>

---

From: "Eric Sedlar" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 09:53:28 -0700

Another model for transactions would be something like the COMPOUND method
in NFSv4.  I thought MSFT also implemented batching versions of some other
WebDAV methods, and that could address both requirements in a way that has
already been approved by the IETF.

---

From: Elias Sinderson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 2004 11:25:29 -0700

Daniel Florey wrote:

> [...] I'd like to add transaction support to the locking spec as 
> described in

I reading about the support for transactions at the URL included above, 
I also saw that MS has introduced 'WebDAV notifications' as well. The 
new methods they have developed to support this are SUBSCRIBE, 
UNSUBSCRIBE, NOTIFY and POLL, and describe each as being a 'WebDAV 
method'. Note further that MS has also defined batch versions of COPY, 
MOVE, DELETE, PROPFIND and PROPPATCH: BCOPY, BMOVE, BDELETE, BPROPFIND 
and BPROPPATCH.

I'm of the opinion that these methods aren't and should not be described 
as 'WebDAV methods', for the obvious reason that they have not been 
developed by the IETF WebDAV working group. Unfortunately, I'm not sure 
what can be done about it either.

Elias