WebDAV

Working across the Internet:

Peter Pierrou, Excosoft

Imagine Internet without Links...

…but we still Edit files like this

See the designspecification. The source codefor ...

DesignSpecification

This is...

Click!

Click!

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Click!

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1. Idea2. Open

3. Browse

4. Find5. Edit

6. Idea forgotten

With links, information is one mouse click away

See the designspecification. The source codefor ...

DesignSpecification

This is...

Click!

1. Idea

2. EDIT

New technology: WebDAV

http://www.webdav.org

” WebDAV is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocolwhich allows users to collaboratively edit andmanage files on remote web servers. ”

Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning

WebDAV TechnologyOld HTTP Methods: Get, Put

Extensions: Lock, Unlock, CheckOut, CheckIn, PropFind, PropPatch, Copy, Move, Delete, MkCol

URI = http://host/path/resource

Metod = HTTP header + XML

Protocol Example

PROPFIND /container/ HTTP/1.1Host: www.excosoft.seContent-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"Content-Length: xxxx

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><propfind xmlns="DAV:"> <propname/></propfind>

Who is behind WebDAV?The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)

Contributors:

University of CaliforniaApache GroupMicrosoftNetscapeNovellXeroxDocumentumPCDocsFilenetRationalIntersolvIBM

Status

"Distributed Authoring" approved by IESG

"Versioning" almost ready

"Distributed Authoring" is included in Windows

2000 as "Web Folders"

Versioning

• Automatic versioning support for versioning-unaware clients

• Linear versioning, and

• support for parallel development and configuration management.

httpserver

Client

HTTP provided Internet read-access

Locking,versioning, etc.

http+DAVserver

Client

WebDAV provides Internetwrite-access!

Visualizing a Repository

WebDAV visualizes a repository as a named hierarchical structure.

Database WebDAV

From OS-files to Web-resources

http+DAVserver

Application

OS

Application

http://host/herlitz/doc.xml

p:\herlitz\doc.xml

"Work on the Web"

The Internet will be Your archive.

Portals

The editable portal

The non-editable portal

Connecting Related Information

Address

Offer

Specifications

Received mail

Sent mail

DAV-enabled

PDM

DAV-enabled

DMS

DAV-enabled

ERP

DAV-enabled

CM

Customer X

My personal portal

Features

• Work directly in source document

• Everything can be version controlled

• Easy to create new documents

• Standard file lock

• Independent of disks, mounts and OS

• General metadata handling (properties)

• Everything has an URL

• Fast access to information

More Features• Version controlled Web Sites

• Use links in mail

• Faster death of HTML

• Standard access control

• The editor is the interface

• The writeable Intranet

• Version controlled links

• Collaboration

Ad hoc queriesDisk browsingArchive browsingApplication entry

From Windows ...

Content controlled browsingStructures and linksKnowledge

… To Information