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Tim Olsen | 2 Oct 2007 23:36

Lime DAV project announcement


Hello,

I am pleased to announce the launch of the Lime DAV project, an
umbrella project for several open-source projects that aim to
implement advanced WebDAV standards.  The first sub-project we are
releasing is Lime Berry, a WebDAV server written in the Ruby on Rails
framework that supports ACL and BIND.  Partial work has also been done
on Lime Berry to support the DeltaV and Quota & Size RFCs.

Future projects to be released include a Ruby WebDAV client library
and Lime Stone, a branch of the catacomb project supporting ACL, BIND,
Mount, SEARCH, DeltaV, and Quota & Size.

The Lime DAV project website can be reached at www.limedav.com .  We
welcome all open-source contributors.

Cheers,
Tim Olsen
Lead Software Developer
Lime Spot LLC
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markus.litz | 5 Oct 2007 16:15
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Standardizing Batch methods?


Hello,

are there any plans for standardizing Batch methods in WebDAV? Is there
a spec that could be discussed or are there real alternatives to
transactions in WebDAV?
I searched in the WebDAV mailing list archive, but the last posts
according to that issue are quite old. 

Cheers,
Markus
--

-- 
Markus Litz
DLR (German Aerospace Center), 
Simulation and Software Technology
Linder Hoehe, 51147 Cologne, Germany
voice: +49 2203 601 2018 	fax: +49 2203 601 3070
eMail: Markus.Litz at dlr.de      http://www.dlr.de/sc
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Julian Reschke | 6 Oct 2007 12:08
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Re: Standardizing Batch methods?


markus.litz <at> dlr.de wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> are there any plans for standardizing Batch methods in WebDAV? Is there
> a spec that could be discussed or are there real alternatives to
> transactions in WebDAV?

I'm not aware of any plans. Things I *am* aware of are:

- two documents for which documentation was requested (BIND, SEARCH) -- 
waiting for the IESG

- a proposal to work on an equivalent of CaldDAV for vCard. Potentially 
a WG will be formed for that, and there was some discussion about 
starting some separate documents simplifying this in the WebDAV stack 
(such as defining a request body for MKCOL, or extrating stuff like 
REPORT from RFC3253).

- maintenance of existing specs (RFC3253bis, RFC3744bis, RFC4918bis...).

> I searched in the WebDAV mailing list archive, but the last posts
> according to that issue are quite old. 

I would guess we'd need to come up with a problem statement first.

There are both batch calls and transaction support in Microsoft 
exchange, and as far as I recall these have the following issues:

Batch: underspecification, not clear whether it's good for retrieval
(Continue reading)

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Tim Olsen | 6 Oct 2007 15:01

Re: Standardizing Batch methods?


On Oct 5, 2007, at 10:15 AM, <markus.litz <at> dlr.de> wrote:
> are there any plans for standardizing Batch methods in WebDAV? Is  
> there
> a spec that could be discussed or are there real alternatives to
> transactions in WebDAV?

DeltaV activities may be able to do what you're looking for.

-Tim
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markus.litz | 7 Oct 2007 21:46
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AW: Standardizing Batch methods?


We develop a WebDAV client specialized for organizing scientific data and one of its main requirements is
absolute data integrity. There are many situations on which one user action results in several
webdav-request. This leads to two serious disadvantages. First, if a user action leads to 50 or 100 webdav
request, depending on the network bandwidth and server performance, this could be really slow. And
secondly if the client crashes in the middle of a difficult job, this could result in inconsistent data.
Some time ago, there was a discussion about microsofts batch methods and transactions, which deals about
exact the same problems we facing here. So, I'm interested if in the meantime one of this solutions had lead
to a draft status or if this issue had been discarded. Maybe our organization could help working to
accelerate the progress of writing a draft.

-Markus

________________________________

Von: Tim Olsen [mailto:tim <at> brooklynpenguin.com]
Gesendet: Sa 06.10.2007 15:01
An: Litz, Markus
Cc: w3c-dist-auth <at> w3.org
Betreff: Re: Standardizing Batch methods?

On Oct 5, 2007, at 10:15 AM, <markus.litz <at> dlr.de> wrote:
> are there any plans for standardizing Batch methods in WebDAV? Is 
> there
> a spec that could be discussed or are there real alternatives to
> transactions in WebDAV?

DeltaV activities may be able to do what you're looking for.

-Tim
(Continue reading)

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Werner Donné | 8 Oct 2007 08:42
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Re: Standardizing Batch methods?


At the moment it is not possible for a WebDAV server to participate
in a distributed transaction. Applications may wish to store documents
in the course of a transaction and be sure that this is rolled back
in case of a failure. I'm therefore in favour of introducing an XA
interface in WebDAV.

There is also a case for having explicit transaction demarcation
methods. For example, clients can benefit from executing a simple
sequence such as check-out/update/check-in in the context of a transation.

Regards,

Werner.

Julian Reschke wrote:
> 
> markus.litz <at> dlr.de wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> are there any plans for standardizing Batch methods in WebDAV? Is there
>> a spec that could be discussed or are there real alternatives to
>> transactions in WebDAV?
> 
> I'm not aware of any plans. Things I *am* aware of are:
> 
> - two documents for which documentation was requested (BIND, SEARCH) -- 
> waiting for the IESG
> 
> - a proposal to work on an equivalent of CaldDAV for vCard. Potentially
(Continue reading)

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Julian Reschke | 8 Oct 2007 10:16
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Re: AW: Standardizing Batch methods?


markus.litz <at> dlr.de wrote:
>  
> We develop a WebDAV client specialized for organizing scientific data and one of its main requirements is
absolute data integrity. There are many situations on which one user action results in several
webdav-request. This leads to two serious disadvantages. First, if a user action leads to 50 or 100 webdav
request, depending on the network bandwidth and server performance, this could be really slow. And
secondly if the client crashes in the middle of a difficult job, this could result in inconsistent data.
> Some time ago, there was a discussion about microsofts batch methods and transactions, which deals about
exact the same problems we facing here. So, I'm interested if in the meantime one of this solutions had lead
to a draft status or if this issue had been discarded. Maybe our organization could help working to
accelerate the progress of writing a draft.

Markus,

the main issue here is that it's totally non-trivial to define batch and 
transactions methods over HTTP.

- for batch: things that bypass caches and pipelining may be slower in 
practice.

- for transactions: I'm only aware of one implementation (Microsoft's), 
and that one breaks HTTP semantics.

So, if you want to get somewhere somebody will have to make a proposal 
and start work implementing it inside a server, proving that it indeed 
works and performs well.

Best regards, Julian
(Continue reading)

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markus.litz | 8 Oct 2007 19:02
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AW: AW: Standardizing Batch methods?


Hi Julian,

so this is indeed a unsolved problem. I was wondering if someone already started with writing a proposal for
either batch calls or transactions. Was there a discussion on which a preference became clear? 
The best may be if I start with reading the microsoft batch & transaction definitions, and than we consider
to start working on a draft.

Ideas?
Markus

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Julian Reschke [mailto:julian.reschke <at> gmx.de]
Gesendet: Mo 08.10.2007 10:16
An: Litz, Markus
Cc: tim <at> brooklynpenguin.com; w3c-dist-auth <at> w3.org
Betreff: Re: AW: Standardizing Batch methods?

markus.litz <at> dlr.de wrote:
>  
> We develop a WebDAV client specialized for organizing scientific data and one of its main requirements is
absolute data integrity. There are many situations on which one user action results in several
webdav-request. This leads to two serious disadvantages. First, if a user action leads to 50 or 100 webdav
request, depending on the network bandwidth and server performance, this could be really slow. And
secondly if the client crashes in the middle of a difficult job, this could result in inconsistent data.
> Some time ago, there was a discussion about microsofts batch methods and transactions, which deals about
exact the same problems we facing here. So, I'm interested if in the meantime one of this solutions had lead
to a draft status or if this issue had been discarded. Maybe our organization could help working to
accelerate the progress of writing a draft.
(Continue reading)

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Julian Reschke | 8 Oct 2007 19:11
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Re: AW: AW: Standardizing Batch methods?


markus.litz <at> dlr.de wrote:
> Hi Julian,
> 
> 
> 
> so this is indeed a unsolved problem. I was wondering if someone already started with writing a proposal
for either batch calls or transactions. Was there a discussion on which a preference became clear? 
> The best may be if I start with reading the microsoft batch & transaction definitions, and than we consider
to start working on a draft.
> 
> Ideas?
> Markus

I would say working on a draft can be useful, but what's even more 
important is to find people willing to implement it. Just writing a 
draft is unlikely to make implementations happen (even RFC4918 IMHO so 
far has a *single* implementation...).

So I'd urge you to first understand what the problems with the Microsoft 
implementations are, and then to check whether the advanced features 
defined in RFC3253 do not already do what you're looking for (at least 
with respect to transactions).

Best regards, Julian
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Joe Feise | 8 Oct 2007 19:52
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Re: AW: AW: Standardizing Batch methods?


How about starting with the workspace and activity concepts in DeltaV?

-Joe

On Mon, October 8, 2007 10:02, markus.litz <at> dlr.de wrote:
>
> Hi Julian,
>
>
>
> so this is indeed a unsolved problem. I was wondering if someone already
> started with writing a proposal for either batch calls or transactions.
> Was there a discussion on which a preference became clear?
> The best may be if I start with reading the microsoft batch & transaction
> definitions, and than we consider to start working on a draft.
>
> Ideas?
> Markus
>
>
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Julian Reschke [mailto:julian.reschke <at> gmx.de]
> Gesendet: Mo 08.10.2007 10:16
> An: Litz, Markus
> Cc: tim <at> brooklynpenguin.com; w3c-dist-auth <at> w3.org
> Betreff: Re: AW: Standardizing Batch methods?
>
> markus.litz <at> dlr.de wrote:
(Continue reading)

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