Subject: Adv. Collections teleconf. March 15, 2000

From: Jim Whitehead <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 13:07:28 -0800

Advanced Collections Teleconference
March 15, 2000

Present: Judy Slein, Jason Crawford, Geoff Clemm, Jim Whitehead, Chuck Fay
Minutes recorded by Jim Whitehead

*** Note that decisions made during the teleconference are always
subject to review on the mailing list.  The mailing list is the final
arbiter of consensus on any issue.  Note also, that the revised
Bindings Protocol specification, and Redirect References
protocol  produced as a result of this conference call will also
be subject to review by the mailing list. ***

BINDINGS:

Began with some discussion of Geoff Clemm's proposed language for binding
"integrity". His proposed language is:

If a DELETE request, MOVE request, or a request with an
Overwrite:T header is applied to a resource identified by the URL
/path/x, and /path identifies a collection that supports the BIND/UNBIND
methods, then the request MUST have the same effect as an UNBIND of x from
/path.
In particular, if the request succeeds, the binding named x MUST be removed
from the collection indentified by /path, and whether or not the request
succeeds, no other bindings from any other collection may be removed.

Hashed around this language a bit.  Batted around the language, "if BIND to
a resource is supported, then a DELETE/MOVE/Overwrite:T to that resource
MUST have the same effect as an UNBIND." But, this doesn't capture the fact
that the collection containing the resource must also support BIND for this
assertion to be true.

REDIRECT REFERENCES:

Issue #49: Section 6.2 is going away (based on discussion last week), so
this issue no longer applies.

Issue #50: Discussed having the Redirect-Ref header give the value of the
redirection (i.e., the relative or absolute URL), and thus not require a
separate method just to read the value of the redirect resource.  Agreed
that this is a good idea, and will put this into the spec.

Decided to disagree with Yaron, and not accept his wording change.  Felt
that his wording suggestion did not make things more clear.

Issue #51: Agreed to delete the first paragraph of section 7.

Issue #52: Disagree with Yaron. Important use cases for relative URLs have
been posted to the mailing list.  Need relative URLs to allow a redirect
resource to behave correctly if it has multiple URL mappings, and is
referring to a resource within its local namespace.

Issue #53: Decided to make this functionality "SHOULD" behavior, since it is
potentially expensive to implement, and is difficult to modularize, as was
pointed out in the comment.  Will also add language describing what happens
if the SHOULD behavior is not implemented (i.e., a 404 is returned).

Issue #54: This was resolved in a discussion on the mailing list.  No
changes needed here.

Issue #55: Agreed to accept Yaron's suggestion and extend the IANA
considerations section with methods, headers, and XML elements.

Issue #56: Agreed that we will add an example showing use of non-HTTP URLs
in a Redirect Reference.

Issue #57: Previously agreed that we will add language forbidding servers to
do redirect reference cleanup.

Issue #58: Agreed that we will provide a mechanism for update of the value
of a Redirect Reference.

Issue #59: Disagreed.  This is too complex, and doesn't appear to address a
pressing use scenario.

Issue #60: Agreed to delete the paragraph containing

Also discussed what should be returned by a PROPFIND multistatus response
that includes a redirect reference resource.  Agreed that only the location
information, and nothing else, should be returned.  The rationale is that
the location is necessary to return, since this tells you where the location
would be redirected. But, if you need to know whether it is a redirect
reference, or an ordinary resource, it is possible to submit a PROPFIND
asking for the redirect value.  Agreed to table this, and reconsider next
week.

Issue #61: Decided to no longer call DAV:location a "psuedoproperty", and
just define a new XML element for this. This contradicts an earlier decision
(Yaron raised this issue previously).  But, we'll still encourage the WebDAV
Distributed Authoring protocol to add this in for 302 responses.

Issue #62: Agreed to delete the sentence, "Until then, non-referencing
clients will not ..."

Issue #63: Agreed to delete section 7.1.  Will reword 7.2 to avoid concerns
with "poses special problems" and "due to atomicity".

Issue #64: We need relative URIs. As a result of needing relative URIs, we
need a different mechanism from the Location header, which must be an
absolute URI. So, do not accept this suggestion.

Issue #65: This issue was discussed in the past, and even made it into some
previous drafts. In the end, the difficulty of having some special cases
that differ from a consistent set of semantics outweighed the advantage of
the special cases. So, we disagree with the suggestion.

Issue #66: Agreed, will make this change.

Issue #67: Wording right now is wrong, so we agree with this suggestion.
Need to get rid of the end of the 2nd to last sentence, and the beginning of
the last sentence, mushing them together.

Issue #68: This issue has been noted on the WebDAV issues list as
"DEEP_LOCK_ERROR_STATUS". Will keep using 207, and will encourage RFC 2518
to be changed to use 207 in this case.

Issue #69: Disagree.  The use of 424 in this case is correct (see def'n of
424 in RFC 2518)

Issue #70: Agreed that we feel that no additional text is needed in this
case.  The draft as-is is adequate.

Issue #71: We accept this change, it's right.

Issue #72: Add a note about not wanting two slashes in a row.  Use this for
rationale for warning against ending a redirect reference target with a
slash, since this will result in two slashes in a row.

*** End of teleconference ***