Subject: ideas for research on wbedav required

From: david muller <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 14:04:36 +0100 (BST)

hi all,

I am new to this group.

Can some help me with some ideas for research on
wbedav.

David.

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From: Jim Whitehead <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 09:59:55 -0700

Yes.

What did you have in mind?

- Jim

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From: david muller <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 20:56:18 +0100 (BST)

hi,
 
what I have in mind is this.
 
I want to basically research upon some idea which exploits the advantages of webdav protocol  over HTTP1.1 to the advantage of some existing problem or for efficiency. 
 
Like say some idea which makes use of the extra methods provided by webdav namely ( e.g profind, propatch, copy, move, delete, lock, unlock) and then aims to solve some existing problem in the computer world today or intends to make some existing process or methodology being curently followed much more efficient.
 
Also I want it to be a real great researchable idea which would require considerable effor on my part to materilaise it. I would like to do a PHD in this.
 
One small idea which I have in mind right now is to develop a Framework For Sending RDF Documents using the WebDAV protocol as transport protocol. But I am not sure if its a real great idea and also its its big enough to do phd upon.

Thanks in anticipation,
 
Regards.

Jim Whitehead <[email-masked]> wrote:
Yes.

- Jim

hi all,

I am new to this group.

David.

---------------------------------
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From: Jim Whitehead <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 14:15:24 -0700

Here are some thoughts on substantial research projects involving  
WebDAV.

* Photo transport protocol. The cost of 802.11x hardware is dropping  
rapidly, while the number of deployed 802.11x access points is  
increasing. Especially with VOIP gaining traction, it seems likely  
that widespread wireless networking access based on TCP/IP will soon  
be a reality. Given this background, it would be very useful for  
digital cameras to be able to automatically transfer their pictures  
from the camera to a remote server. WebDAV seems like a useful  
protocol to build upon for such a service, since it's well suited for  
synchronization, and has strong metadata facilities. The existing  
standard in this space, CPXe (http://www.i3a.org/) is focused on  
getting photos to photo finishing services for hardcopy. Many  
consumers want auto-download without being required to upload to a  
photo finishing service. Project: develop a standard for automatic  
photo upload from a camera via wireless networking.

* Identity management protocol. Many web sites require users to  
create an identify for that site, usually by creating a username/ 
password pair. Users interacting with multiple sites need to maintain  
multiple username/password pairs (or compromise security by using the  
same pair). It would be much more convenient to have a single signon  
capability. There are many existing efforts in this space (Passport,  
Liberty Alliance), with each effort having some concern over its  
degree of capture by one or more organizations or communities. Since  
identity management involves a fair amount of metadata management,  
WebDAV might be a good protocol to use as a starting point in  
crafting an identity management protocol, due to its strong support  
for metadata, and DeltaV versioning capabilities.. This issue can  
have significant impact on the cross-organization calendar scheduling  
problem (see CalDAV).

* Email transport protocol. Spam is killing SMTP. It would be nice to  
have a mail transport protocol that was point-to-point, and involved  
authentication or some form of expensive computation for people to  
write email to a remote inbox. An email message is a blog of content  
plus metadata, just like a WebDAV resource. WebDAV + ACLs might be an  
interesting starting point for creating an alternate to SMTP for mail  
transport.  WebDAV is already the third most popular email transport  
between mail server and mail client (MUA), since Hotmail and Outlook  
Express use WebDAV for mail transport. Note that this project might  
very well also involve a solution for identity management. For extra  
credit (and a shred of hope for adoption), ensure some form of  
interoperability with the existing SMTP-based email system (perhaps  
by putting all of this email into an "untrusted" or "unverified"  
folder).

RDF may very well be a useful technology in addressing the metadata  
aspects of these projects. Or it might not. Let the requirements  
drive your choice of technology, not vice-versa.

- Jim Whitehead
Assistant Professor
Computer Science
UC Santa Cruz

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From: david muller <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 23:37:20 +0100 (BST)

Dear Sir,

thanks for your ideas. I had myself once vaguely
thought of the webdav email transport protocol long
back but could not get the clear thought that time. I
found it quite interesting and innovative. I will
concentrate on this idea for now and will look into
other ideas later.

Few poins:

1. What I could understand of the idea is "To Develop
a Mail Transport Protocol Based on WEBDAV (i.e which
uses the extra methods like copy, move, delete,
profind, propatch, lock, unlock provided by webdav).
". The protocol should be point to point, have
authentication, some sort of identity management.

2. You have said that WebDAV is already the third most
popular email transport  between mail server and mail
client (MUA ?), since Hotmail and Outlook Express use
WebDAV for mail transport. So does it mean that
hotmail and outlook have already developed a transport
protocol based on WEBDAV and are using it?

3. Would one of the major intention behind this new
transport protocol be to stop SPAM (you have said that
SPAM is killing SMTP)? If yes then I really did not
understand that why you think that point to point
transport protocol would not have spam problem.

Thanks for your time,
Regards.

> * Email transport protocol. Spam is killing SMTP. It
> would be nice to have a mail transport protocol that
was > point-to-point, and involved  
> folder)

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From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 21:26:29 -0700

I suspect it is hard to do a PhD on a protocol but there is a problem that
has interest me a big and I suspect that DAV might be a small part of the
answer. More and more I various communication devices - cell phones, pda,
pager, computers, IM devices. They deal with various media: short
interactive text, longer text, voice, video, smell-o-vision. And I have all
kinds of rules about who can send me messages when and how they get routed
to me. My company has rules too. I have privacy constraints. Regulatory
bodies have rules and anti privacy constraints. If I block Alice from
sending me email, I probably want to block her from IM too. It's fine to
have rules in just a single email reader but if I want the rules there to
effect all my communications, such as a phone call, I need more. How do I
mange all these rules. How do I merge these rules. How does one device
discover my rules, edit them, then upload them for all my devices. How do
privacy of sender and receiver, and preferences of sender and receiver all
get balanced. How do you make it simple enough for a single user to
understand. How can an agent that watches that I just paged Alice decide to
go and add a temporarily rule to page me if I get an email from Alice. How
can we collect enough statistics to realize that I always send phone calls
from Bob to voicemail so just send them straight there without ringing my
phone. I suspect that answering these hard questions might be able to lead
to some PhD research and it seems very likely the way to transport, edit,
and control the policy information could be DAV.

I'm cool with talk about what sort of research could be done involving
WebDav on this list, but please, please, if we are going discuss the SPAM
things, please, please move it to some other list. Anywhere but my backyard
is fine, may I suggest the DKIM mailing list. I'm sure DAV is a fine
protocol to transfer keys for DKIM, take it to the DKIM list.

Cullen (not as chair)

On 10/5/05 3:37 PM, "david muller" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo!
> Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com