Re: Standardizing Batch methods?

At the moment it is not possible for a WebDAV server to participate
in a distributed transaction. Applications may wish to store documents
in the course of a transaction and be sure that this is rolled back
in case of a failure. I'm therefore in favour of introducing an XA
interface in WebDAV.

There is also a case for having explicit transaction demarcation
methods. For example, clients can benefit from executing a simple
sequence such as check-out/update/check-in in the context of a transation.

Regards,

Werner.

Julian Reschke wrote:
> 
> [email protected] wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> are there any plans for standardizing Batch methods in WebDAV? Is there
>> a spec that could be discussed or are there real alternatives to
>> transactions in WebDAV?
> 
> I'm not aware of any plans. Things I *am* aware of are:
> 
> - two documents for which documentation was requested (BIND, SEARCH) -- 
> waiting for the IESG
> 
> - a proposal to work on an equivalent of CaldDAV for vCard. Potentially 
> a WG will be formed for that, and there was some discussion about 
> starting some separate documents simplifying this in the WebDAV stack 
> (such as defining a request body for MKCOL, or extrating stuff like 
> REPORT from RFC3253).
> 
> - maintenance of existing specs (RFC3253bis, RFC3744bis, RFC4918bis...).
> 
>> I searched in the WebDAV mailing list archive, but the last posts
>> according to that issue are quite old. 
> 
> I would guess we'd need to come up with a problem statement first.
> 
> There are both batch calls and transaction support in Microsoft 
> exchange, and as far as I recall these have the following issues:
> 
> Batch: underspecification, not clear whether it's good for retrieval 
> because it bypasses caches.
> 
> Transactions: breaks GET, because specifying the transaction id as a 
> request header essentially makes all requests content-negotiated.
> 
> So... what's the problem you're looking to solve?
> 
> Best regards, Julian
> 

-- 
Werner Donné  --  Re
Engelbeekstraat 8
B-3300 Tienen
tel: (+32) 486 425803	e-mail: [email protected]