Subject: Re: Properties of bindings (was Re: Issues remaining with Bind draft)

From: Jason Crawford <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 22:10:03 -0500

> The "hidden" flag you suggest would also be interesting as a 
> binding  property, as was suggested in this Internet-Draft 
> (also implemented in  Microsoft servers):
> http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/authoring/props/draft-hopmann-
> collection-props-00.txt

Although I'm not sure if hidden is a good example, I don't have a problem 
with some hypothetical property returning a different value depending on 
which URL you use to reference it.  In fact I wouldn't be surprised if we 
eventually intentionally define a property that does vary by URL.  But we 
should be clear right now that all properties that are resource based 
(which is basically everything at the time of the writing) should not vary 
by URL and that future properties should not vary by URL without a 
documented reason. 

J.

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From: Jason Crawford <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 22:10:03 -0500

> Lisa Dusseault wrote:
> 
> > I found a reference to the "parentname" property, defined for Exchange 

> > 2000 and Exchange 2003 in the "DAV:" namespace (no big surprise there 
> > though it's unfortunate):
> > 
> > http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wss/ 
> > wss/_cdo_schema_dav.asp
> 
> I fail to see the issue. It only means that when Microsoft decides to 
> support the BIND draft, they'll have to re-think that design decision. 
> Just because somebody in the past did a poor system design that is 
> inherently incompatible with having multiple URIs for the same resource 
> shouldn't prevent *us* from doing things right.

I agree although I'd not be so harsh in my wording.  :-)

If they decide to support bindings, then they might have to make changes 
to that property definition.  This shouldn't be a big problem because it's 
their property to define however they like.   Although hopefully they 
avoid using the DAV: namespace.

J.

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 09:10:35 +0200

Jason Crawford wrote:

> Although I'm not sure if hidden is a good example, I don't have a 
> problem with some hypothetical property returning a different value 
> depending on which URL you use to reference it.  In fact I wouldn't be 
> surprised if we eventually intentionally define a property that does 
> vary by URL.  But we should be clear right now that all properties that 
> are resource based (which is basically everything at the time of the 
> writing) should not vary by URL and that future properties should not 
> vary by URL without a documented reason.

Well, I think that properties SHOULD NOT vary on request URI (nor should 
the content), as this is clearly against the goals of the BIND spec. 
RFC2518 says that PROPFIND returns the resource's properties, and BIND 
speaks about having multiple URIs for the same resource. I think this is 
clear enough...

If you need responses that vary with the request URI, you're IMHO not 
talking to the *same* resource anymore.

Regards, Julian

-- 
<green/>bytes GmbH -- http://www.greenbytes.de -- tel:+492512807760

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From: Jason Crawford <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 02:32:07 -0500

> the content), as this is clearly against the goals of the BIND spec.
I agree.  "SHOULD NOT" seems more than lenient enough.

> speaks about having multiple URIs for the same resource. I think this is

Agreed.