Subject: RE: WEBDAV servers

From: Jim Whitehead <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1998 16:08:55 -0700

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked]
> [mailto:[email-masked]]On Behalf Of Jeffrey Ricker
> Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 1998 10:58 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: WEBDAV servers
>
>
> I'm brand new to this forum.

One of the best ways to get up-to-speed on WebDAV is to read through the
introductory materials on the WebDAV Web site, at:

http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/webdav/

In particular, there is a flyer there, at:

http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/webdav/intro/webdav_flyer.pdf

Other introductory materials are available at:

http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/webdav/intro.html

I'm also currently in-process of revising the ACM StandardView article which
is an introduction to WebDAV, and these new revisions will appear soon in
the ASIS Bulletin and IEEE Internet Computing.  I'll post URLs once they're
available.

> Has anyone built a webdav server yet? Does anyone have one in the works?

While I know of several commercial WebDAV servers which are under
development, none have yet been publically announced.  However, this seems
like a good time to repeat my call for volunteers to work on an Apache (or
perhaps some other code base) server to add WebDAV capability.  If you're
interested in working on this project, please send me an email.

> When will the spec be submitted to the W3C? Has a date been set?

As was pointed out by John Stracke, WebDAV is a working group of the
Internet Engineering Task Force <http://www.ietf.org/> -- for an
introduction, see <http://www.ietf.org/overview.html>.  The IETF is a
standards developing organization, like the World Wide Web Consortium,
however, though these two organizations do cooperate on Web-related
standards, they are distinct organizations, with different procedures and
membership criteria.  With respect to the Web, traditionally the IETF has
worked on transport and identifier standards (e.g., HTTP, URI, WebDAV, IPP,
etc.) while the W3C has worked on content standards (HTML, XML, CSS, PNG,
etc.)

Revision -08 of the WebDAV Distributed Authoring Protocol specification was
submitted to the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) for approval in
April, 1998, and is currently pending review by our Application Area
Advisor, Keith Moore.  No date has yet been set for when this review will
complete, or when the WebDAV specification will be approved.  I am hopeful
this will occur in September, but currently most variables which affect this
process are out of my control.  However, the specification has undergone
significant community review, and appears to be a solid specification.

Other current work items can be found on the WebDAV home page.

- Jim