Subject: RE: Issue: PROP_ATTR

From: "Clemm, Geoff" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 07:35:11 -0400

I vote, require that all attributes be kept for dead properties,
and that the behavior for live properties be defined in the specification
that defines that live property.

My rationale is that dead properties pretty much have to be stored as
a string, since the server doesn't know how the user might want to
use them, while for live properties, there often will be "value preserving"
transformations the server can apply, since the server knows what the
semantics
of that property are.

Cheers,
Geoff

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Whitehead [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 8:54 PM
To: WebDAV WG
Subject: Issue: PROP_ATTR

As mentioned in a previous post, now is the time to start resolving issues
on the RFC 2518 issues list.  As fate would have it, the first issue on the
list is one that has been contentious in the past. Can we come to consensus
on it now?

Issue: PROP_ATTR

Description:

What is a WebDAV server required to do with XML attributes other than
xml:lang submitted with a PROPPATCH?  This affects how well WebDAV will be
able to support RDF, since RDF uses attributes extensively.

Greg Stein originally raised this issue:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1998OctDec/0089.html

See also:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1998OctDec/0092.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1998OctDec/0094.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1998OctDec/0095.html

---

From: Douglas Steen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 09:45:36 -0500

I'll add my vote: "Aye"; enforce attribute persistence on the top-level node
for dead properties.

I will point out, however, that -- according to my own quick test --
Microsoft's IIS5 DAV implementation does NOT persist attributes at that
level.  And since they don't allow markup in dead properties, they
essentially don't persist attributes at ANY level.  Now I know that the onus
is on MS to conform to the DAV spec, and not vice-versa, but I'd be curious
to know if there were server implementation issues (for MS and others) that
might change some minds on this decision.

    Douglas R. Steen
    [email-masked]
    Drag-and-Drop Web Content Management
    http://www.eKeeper.com