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Re: Evaluation: draft-ietf-webdav-ordering-protocol - WebDAVOrdered Collections Protocol



Hi Allison,
	By "ordering semantics" they mean the value of
DAV:"ordering-type", i.e, DAV:unordered or DAV:custom.
Any other URI there indicates that it has some ordering
semantics identified by that URI.  At the moment,
pretty much all will be custom, since this is for server
maintained by client-specified orders (like page numbers).
The working group would like eventually to have server-applied
semantics, but didn't get that done in this document.  I
see the any other URI  possibility as a hook for that in the future,
and I suspect that is why they used the relatively
rarified "ordering semantics" language rather than something
more plain.
			regards,
				Ted

At 8:04 AM -0700 7/10/03, Allison Mankin wrote:
 >
 Last Call to expire on: 2003-06-19

         Please return the full line with your position.

                       Yes  No-Objection  Discuss  Abstain

 Allison Mankin       [   ]     [   ]     [ X ]     [   ]

This may be a question of not finding the material easy going, but the
term "ordering semantics" needs a definition.  For instance in the material
below, if the ORDERPATCH method has specified an ordering semantic, it's hard
to see why the server assigned positions may be based on arbitrary ordering
approaches by the server.  What is the distinction of ordering and ordering
semantic?  How does the URI for "ordering semantics" work? (As in:
   In this example, after the request has been processed, the
   collection's ordering semantics are identified by the URI http://
   example.org/inorder.ord. The value of the collection's
   DAV:ordering-type property has been set to this URI.)

I think there just needs to be a section early on with some definitions
and mechanics of these important concepts.

 Changing a Collection Ordering: ORDERPATCH method

   The ORDERPATCH method is used to change the ordering semantics of a
   collection or to change the order of the collection's members in the
   ordering or both.

   The server MUST apply the changes in the order they appear in the
   order XML element. The server MUST either apply all the changes or
   apply none of them. If any error occurs during processing, all
   executed changes MUST be undone and a proper error result returned.

   If an ORDERPATCH request changes the ordering semantics, but does not
   completely specify the order of the collection members, the server
   MUST assign a position in the ordering to each collection member for
   which a position was not specified. These server-assigned positions
   MUST all follow the last one specified by the client.  The result is
   that all members for which the client specified a position are at the
   beginning of the ordering, followed by any members for which the
   server assigned positions. Note that the ordering of the
   server-assigned positions is not defined by this document, therefore
   servers can use whatever rule seems reasonable (for instance,
   alphabetically or by creation date).

   If an ORDERPATCH request does not change the ordering semantics, any
   member positions not specified in the request MUST remain unchanged.

Editorial - this sentence has two spelling errors:

   The following sequence of requests will rename a collection member
   while preserving it's position, independantly of how the server
                    ^^^^                  ^^^^
   implements the MOVE operation: