As many of you are aware, the IETF WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and
Versioning) working group was created to develop a set of extensions to HTTP
to allow interoperable remote authoring of Web resources. Though the
initial mission of WebDAV was to provide services for both remote authoring
*and* versioning, the versioning capabilities were dropped from the WebDAV
protocol to finish the remote authoring capabilities in a timely manner.
As a result, the WebDAV working group finished the Distributed Authoring
Protocol, specified in RFC 2518. This protocol has facilities for overwrite
prevention (LOCK, UNLOCK), namespace management (MOVE, COPY, MKCOL), and
properties (PROPPATCH, PROPFIND). The WebDAV working group is continuing to
work on an access control protocol, advanced collection capabilities, and a
revision of RFC 2518.
The WebDAV Resources site has more information on WebDAV at:
http://www.webdav.org/
The WebDAV WG home page is at
http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/webdav/
The DeltaV working group was formed to extend HTTP/DAV with versioning and
configuration management capabilities, completing the original goal of the
WebDAV working group. Some call it putting the "V" back into WebDAV. DeltaV
has been developing a protocol document, "Versioning Extensions to WebDAV",
<draft-ietf-deltav-versioning-08>, available at:
http://www.webdav.org/deltav/protocol/draft-ietf-deltav-versioning-08.htm
The protocol encompasses the ability to check-in and check-out resources,
view the history tree, create private workspaces, group changes into
activities, and develop configurations. It introduces several new HTTP
methods, including REPORT, VERSION-CONTROL, CHECKOUT, CHECKIN, UNCHECKIN,
SET-TARGET, LABEL, MKWORKSPACE, MKACTIVITY, BASELINE-CONTROL, and MERGE. It
also introduces several new WebDAV properties, and has an associated
versioning data model.
The chair of the working group, Jim Amsden, has indicated that the DeltaV
versioning protocol is going to begin a working group last call period at
the end of September, thus indicating that the protocol document is stable,
has resolved existing design choices, and is at a good point to receive
broad community review. If you would like to examine this protocol, and
provide feedback now, when it is still relatively easy to make changes, I
encourage you to read the latest I-D (or working draft), and submit comments
to the DeltaV mailing list.
The DeltaV working group home page is:
http://www.webdav.org/deltav/
The DeltaV mailing list is: ietf-dav-versioning(_at_)w3(_dot_)org -- send a
message
with subject line of "subscribe" to
ietf-dav-versioning-request(_at_)w3(_dot_)org(_dot_)
- Jim Whitehead <ejw(_at_)cse(_dot_)ucsc(_dot_)edu>
Chair, WebDAV Working Group
Assistant Professor, UC Santa Cruz