Subject: [Bug 154] ADD_DEPTH_ZERO_DELETE

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 11:10:48 -0800

http://ietf.cse.ucsc.edu:8080/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=154

[email-masked] changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|NEW                         |RESOLVED
         Resolution|                            |WONTFIX

------- Additional Comments From [email-masked]  2005-12-16 11:10 -------
Discussed during the 12/16/2005 teleconference.

We noted that the driving case for implementing this feature is the desire to
replicate file system semantics for delete on a collection, in which the delete
succeeds only if the collection is entirely empty. It is currently difficult to
achieve these semantics with WebDAV right now. 

One problem with simply introducing Depth 0 DELETE into the specification is
that clients would then need a way to discover that this capability was
supported. On the other hand, RFC 2518 explicitly states that servers MUST only
allow Depth with value of infinity. This means that if 2518 servers receive a
Depth 0 DELETE they should reject it, opening the possibility that 2518bis
servers could allow it.

There was also some discussion concerning whether we would want to address this
problem using a state token for the collection, and then use the existing If
header to test the state token. This might also have the benefit of supporting
synchronization of collections as well.

Julian will perform research on whether servers consistly implement the
rejection semantics.

Since this is part of a larger design space, and since we don't currently have a
mandate to add new features, consensus was to resolve, WONTFIX. We encourage
Julian to perform this research.

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