

Re: More detailed responses to responses...

From: <Tim_Ellison@uk.ibm.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 14:22:12 +0100
To: ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
Message-ID: <8025696F.004A2F91.00@d06mta07.portsmouth.uk.ibm.com>

See <tim2> tags below...

>    Section 5.2.6, DAV:version-name
>    Refers to Version URL. Where is this defined?
>    <tim> It isn't :-(
> In the 9.1 draft, all remaining uses of the phrase "version URL"
> have been replaced by "URL that identifies a version".

How do clients discover the "URL that identifies a version"?  I would think
it would be useful, though perhaps not required, to have this be
discoverable in a standard way.

<tim2> The URL for a version (along with those of its peers) can be found
from the history resource property <DAV:version-set>, or a particular
version identified by a target selector is found in the <DAV:target>
property of the selector.

>    Section 5.3, Version Selector Properties
>    How does a client definitively figure out if a URL points to a
> what methods, live properties, and reports it supports?

I'm not so sure... Since there's already so much variation in server
implementation possibilities (auto-versioning, automatic creation of
versioned resources, what URLs of versions look like, etc.)  I'd rather not
leave that up to the guesswork of the client.  I could imagine a resource
that "used to be" versioned appearing very much like a resource that is
currently versioned.  A definitive property that declares whether a
is a version selector, a version, or a version history would clearly fix

business.  Someone (you know who you are<g>) was going to check to see if
webfolders would work in the face of 'strucured' resource type values, and
if we could be backwards compatible, this would be my preference (i.e., a
resource type would be <DAV:collection><DAV:version-selector/>... etc.)
Failing this approach, a separate property would be good.

>    Section 6.1, Overwrite
>    Does this section imply that doing a PUT, POST, COPY or MOVE with a
>    destination URL that is versioned with "Overwrite: T" header
> should delete
>    all the version history and replace the versioned resource
> with either a
>    non-versioned resource -- or a versioned resource whose
> history has been
>    deleted??  Please, please, say no -- versioning-unaware clients will
>    constantly be stomping on version-history if we define it this way.
> I assume that by "versioned resource", you mean "version selector"?
> The deletion of a version selector (resulting from Overwrite:T) has
> no affect on the version that is the target of that version selector,
> nor on the version history of that version.  They are three distinct
> and disjoint resources (in fact, in core versioning, you have no way
> of naming a version history resource, much less delete it).

<tim2> If you meant that the destination was a version, the PUT/POST/...
would fail outright, if the destination were a version selector...(see

OK, I'm confused.  I'm concerned about servers that support auto-versioning
here, so for those servers...

the resource whose versions are represented by the version selector?

and properties.  Implementation aside, think of a checked in version
selector as an immutable copy of a version whose DAV:target indicates where
it was copied from.  Checking out such a version selector opens the copy
for change ('in place'), and updates via PUT/whatever to the version
selector are 'isolated' from other versions and the history of the resource
associated with the version selector.  When you checkin the version
selector it marks it as immutable and copies the content & dead properties
into a new version (in the version history).

<tim2> As I said, you wouldn't want to implement it this way, but that's
how I choose to think about it.

<tim2> Now if you think about how version selectors react when they are the
destination of a method, it makes more sense.

Doesn't the version selector "pass through" most requests somehow?

<tim2> No, the 'redirector model' leads to the wrong conclusions about the
delta v behaviour.  You are not the first to adopt this model from reading
the spec.

the use of VERSION-CONTROL turn the target -- say "foo.doc" -- from a
regular resource into a version selector which points a version with the
contents that used to be in "foo.doc"?  I thought a PUT to "foo.doc", when
"foo.doc" is actually not a single-versioned resource but a version
which points to one of a selection of versions, would result in a creation
of a new version.  If that is true, then how is PUT with Overwrite:T
possibly going to overwrite the version selector?

<tim2> Hopefully thinking about it as described above will fix this.

>    Please clarify if "overwrite:F" should result in no write at all if a
>    versioned resource exists at the destination.
> Again, I assume you mean "version selector".  (Note to design team:
> think of the confusion that would have resulted if we had used
> the term "versioned resource" to mean "version history" :-).
> Overwrite:F has its usual semantics, namely abort the operation if
> a resource exists at the destination.

Please at least recommend that in the draft.

>    What if the source resource is not versioned, and the target is?
>    Surely what the user intends is to make the contents of the source
>    become the newest version at the target, not to delete the whole
>    version history!  Imagine I'm working in my personal directory on
>    some code/document, and when I've got it in a good/tested state, I
>    decide to put it into the shared code/document area, where files
>    are under version control.  Surely COPY is the natural way to do
>    this.
>    <tim> The natural way would, I suggest, be to checkout the destination
>    resources, update them with your personal directory contents,
> and checkin
>    the updates.
> I agree. In particular, if you have done any resource moving/renaming
> in your personal directory, you'd better do those moves/renames in the
> versioned area before doing your updates.

Fine, but neither of these answers answered my question.  What if in a COPY
the source resource is not versioned, and the target is a version selector?
I'd propose that the behaviour be to use the source content to create a new
version with that content at the destination.

<tim2> With overwrite 'T' you would blow away the version selector with the
new copy of the source.  Whether it was versioned or not is server
dependent (as for all newly created resources).

>    Section 10.1 - VERSION-CONTROL
>    I would prefer not to have a separate method for this.  Would we need
>    separate method for making something auto-versioned as well?
> I understand
>    the desire to convert an existing resource to a versioned resource; it
>    should be done with PROPPATCH since we've already got that method.
> VERSION-CONTROL does a lot more than just update a property on the
> resource identified by the request-URL.  It also creates a version
> resource, and creates an initial revision in that version history.  I
> believe it would be misleading to make that all be the side effect of

Why is this misleading?  Why is this any worse than auto-creation of
versioned resources, as proposed in the draft?

<tim2> I'll let Geoff clarify his own comments, but I suspect he meant that
you though you were doing a simple property update from False to True, and
hey presto the server disk is going mad creating a bunch of new resources
as a side-effect -- that may mislead clients that thought it was a simple

<tim2> I believe that it would be worse than auto-creation of versioned
resources since at least the client is making a resource creation request
in this case, and for servers that version everything, creatig a new
versioned resource is probably an optimized operation for them.

>    I am
>    specifically thinking of clients here, and how they can make
> fewer requests
>    (particularly when creating a new, versioned resource) and
> client coders
>    would write less special-purpose code (less bugs!).  As a server
>    implementor, this new method isn't as big a deal since I know
> I'd have to
>    treat the property specially instead.
> When used to create a version selector for an existing version history,
> the VERSION-CONTROL method takes two arguments: the location of the
> new version selector, and the version that should be its initial target.
> There's no way to marshal both arguments in a PROPPATCH.
> In any case, I don't see how you save any code by having PROPPATCH
> dispatch to your version control routine instead of having the
> VERSION-CONTROL method dispatch to the exact same routine.

Like I said, it's not the server that saves code in this particular
instance, but the client.  Clients that do versioning intelligently may be
possible with existing client APIs if we do this carefully -- with

On the server side, it isn't code that is conserved, but testing and
specification effort may be.  It's easier to adapt a test suite that
has PROPPATCH; it's easier to specify how PROPPATCH of a new prop should
work than to specify a whole new METHOD (with attendant headers, how does
each header interact with method, errors, etc).

>    ... If a resource is already
> CHECKOUT request?
> body of the CHECKOUT request.

Excellent.  Please put this in the draft.
version has already been checked out.

>    Can you do a CHECKIN if you haven't done a CHECKOUT?
> Depends what you mean by "you".  You can do a CHECKIN on any resource
> that is checked out (i.e. a checked-out version selector or a working
> resource), assuming that a write lock does not prevent you from doing so.

So clients are recommended to LOCK, CHECKOUT, PUT, CHECKIN, UNLOCK if they
want to prevent other checkins in the meantime?  Fair enough.

<tim2> Taking out a lock on a version selector will prevent other PUTs on
the version selector, and prevent others from checking it back in, but it
won't prevent other checkouts of the version (via othe version selectors or
working resources), or other versions of the resource.

>    Section 10.5, SET-TARGET
>    I'm proposing, in a separate mail, that this be replaced with
>    the DAV:target property.
> This would be a PROPPATCH with a very major side effect.  In particular,
> not only would it update the DAV:target property, but it would update
> the content and all the dead properties of the version selector as well.
> That's way too many side effects for my taste.

Why is it fine for a new method to have a bunch of side effects, but not
PROPPATCH of a new property?

It's simple to design the property such that ignorant clients are extremely
unlikely to set the property ignorantly and surprise themselves.  Just make
the only valid values of the "DAV:target" property be values which the
client/user would be unlikely to come up with at random.  I think my
recommendation fit that bill, because it ensconced the URL in a <href> tag,
the name in a <name> tag, etc.

So if a server supports putting a URL to a version in "DAV:target", you
would set (in the body of the PROPPATCH):

If the server supports putting a label in "DAV:target", you would set

Finally, if the server supports putting a version-name in a "DAV:target",
you would set

Why is this any more dangerous than SET-TARGET?  It's no more likely to be
used accidentally!

<tim2> Without wanting to be dragged into the merits or otherwise of doing
these significant operations on the server by virtue of a property change
... oh, I think I just did get dragged into it <g>

A thought to throw out:  I would support replacing SET-TARGET and
VERSION-CONTROL (maybe LABEL, and maybe a couple others) with a new method
that treats "settings" (things with side effects) differently from

So we could name this "SET" (or "SETTINGPATCH" or "CHANGE-SETTING" if you
want verbosity); It would be very similar to PROPPATCH in syntax.
 - This method would only be used to change one setting at a time, since
changing multiple settings at a time brings up concerns of the interactions
and order of application.
 - Atomicity wouldn't be a concern if it only changes one setting at a

<tim2> Depends upon the effects of changing that setting.

 - We would only have to define syntax once -- whether depth is allowed,
other headers might apply, what errors can be returned -- rather than
syntax every time we want to do something similar to this in any
protocol design effort

<tim2> Ahh, but you would have to define what all the setting were, valid
values, interactions, etc.

 - It would be a good "bundle" of activity -- like PROPPATCH -- to which a
single permission might reasonably be applied

Received on Thursday, 5 October 2000 09:31:51 GMT
