Subject: RE: WebDAV Resources

From: "B. Shadgar" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 11:26:37 +0100

>> I am wondering if anybody let me know or reference me which project
and
>> features to have access control on the objects of database like
tables,
>> views and queries? And how they use of Webdav to implement access
>> control.

>I'm not sure I know of any servers that treat an entire database as a
single
>WebDAV resource (well, I suppose you could store an entire Access
database
>file on any DAV server...)

By definition of WebDAV in RFC 2518, it that possible to consider a
whole database as a resource? Or the resource in this document just
stands for files and directories.

Bita Shadgar.

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From: "Jim Whitehead" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 10:31:13 -0700

> stands for files and directories.

The concept of a "resource" is intentionally loose. Basically, a resource is
an abstraction. Since the notion of a database is an abstraction, just as a
cell in a database is too, either could be considered resources. A resource
can be mapped to a URI, URN, or URL.

So, if you write a server implementation that maps an entire database as a
resource, and maps it to a URL, then yes, it is possible to consider a
database as a whole resource. Similarly, if you write a server
implementation that maps individual database cells to a resource, then
assigns each cell a distinct URL, then it is possible to consider a database
cell as a Web resource.

WebDAV defines operations for working with Web resources via HTTP, so the
effect of a DAV operation on the underlying repository depends on the
mapping of resources to abstractions in that repository.

The "official" definition of a resource can be found in RFC 2396:

http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/uri/rfc2396.txt

      Resource
         A resource can be anything that has identity.  Familiar
         examples include an electronic document, an image, a service
         (e.g., "today's weather report for Los Angeles"), and a
         collection of other resources.  Not all resources are network
         "retrievable"; e.g., human beings, corporations, and bound
         books in a library can also be considered resources.
         The resource is the conceptual mapping to an entity or set of
         entities, not necessarily the entity which corresponds to that
         mapping at any particular instance in time.  Thus, a resource
         can remain constant even when its content---the entities to
         which it currently corresponds---changes over time, provided
         that the conceptual mapping is not changed in the process.

- Jim

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From: "Lisa Dusseault" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 11:12:15 -0700

> assigns each cell a distinct URL, then it is possible to consider

Although both these are possible, I've always thought that mapping rows to
resources and tables to collections was the most useful.  The MSDAIPP
component used by MS clients (you can see its name in the User-Agent header
if you sniff) takes this approach in a way: it presents an OLEDB interface
to the client software developer which treats every file and collection as a
row.

lisa

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From: Bita Shadgar <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:03:44 +0100

> to the client software developer which treats every file and collection as a

Do you know any software or project which has had such above resource( rows as
resources)? I 've looked at webDAV homepage, however I couldn't find.

 Bita.