Subject: A few comments on the ACL specification...

From: Peter Raymond <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 13:38:28 +0100

Hi,

I have read through the WebDAV Access Control Protocol specification (draft
6)
and have a few comments/questions:

1) In section 1.1 where Terms are defined I think they are listed in the
wrong order,
it seems to make sense to me to explain ACE before we explain ACL, since
one refers to the other.  Similarly we should explain "Abstract Privilege"
after
we define ACE.

2) In the spec (section 1.1) we define "Protected Property" (which is also
defined in the 
DeltaV specification), then in section 5.3 we say that
DAV:current-user-privilege-set 
is a protected property, but it is computed.  So I think the property more
closely matches
the DeltaV definition of a "Computed Property", could we include that in
section 1.1?
Also should we include these definitions in the list of "cross-dependencies"
between the 
specifications in Section 20 at the end of the ACL spec?

3) In sections 5.3.1, 5.4.5, 8.1.4, 9.2.1, and 9.3.1 of the specification
there are some 
foreign characters which I think should be double-quotes (I think these are
just formatting 
errors).

4) In the later sections of the document we use the
Precondition/Postcondition syntax,
similar to the DeltaV specification, should we not include some definition
of what
pre/post conditions are and how they work (just like section 1.6 of the
DeltaV specification).

5) In the specification we define the REPORT method and several reports, but
it does
not define the DAV:supported-report-set property.  Should we also define
that property
so that an ACL aware client can tell if a given resource supports one of the
ACL reports?

P.S. Anyone know the status of the WebDAV bindings protocol?  Is this
working group 
editing this document or is it dead/experimental?

Regards,
--
Peter Raymond - MERANT
Technical Architect (ADM)
Tel: +44 (0)1727 813362
Fax: +44 (0)1727 869804
mailto:[email-masked]
WWW: http://www.merant.com

---

From: "Jim Whitehead" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 09:13:50 -0700

Thank you for your detailed review of the ACL specification -- I'm a bit
swamped right now to reply to each comment, but I'll give them detailed
consideration when creating the -07 spec.

> P.S. Anyone know the status of the WebDAV bindings protocol?
> Is this working group editing this document or is it dead/experimental?

This document is currently quiescent. It current status is that it has
passed through a working group last call for comments period, which
generated significant comments. These comments need to be integrated into
the next version of the draft, and then another WG last call needs to be
held. I am hopeful to get to this in the next few months, since I feel this
draft needs to be done before we can bring 2518 to Draft standard status,
since the bindings specification contains numerous fixes to the DAV
containment model.

- Jim