Re: [Storagesync] Storagesync Digest, Vol 5, Issue 1

[François Kooman <[e-mail]>]

On 12/03/2015 10:06 AM, [e-mail] wrote:
> If we really want to discuss the Pros and Cons of WebDAV, can we
> mark these three reasons as disadvantages of WebDAV? any support for
> that?

Personally, I do not think that is fair.

> 1) it's a lot of work to implement this without using an existing
> WebDAV library 

I do not see a problem in reusing an existing WebDAV library. This has
the added benefit that you get a lot of functionality 'for free' and
that existing test suites are available for testing compatibility. This
is purely a practical argument!

> 2) in practice, a lot of WebDAV servers get it wrong,
> or don't implement all of WebDAV. It's very annoying for client
> implementers to have to deal with servers that e.g. chose not to
> implement LOCK and UNLOCK. 

The point is not to have a fully compliant (whatever that is exactly)
WebDAV server. Either this ML (or remoteStorage specification) could
determine a subset of WebDAV that would be required to be implemented.
E.g. we exhaustively list the verbs that need to be implemented and
their expected behavior. If we keep this a limited as possible and stay
away from experimental features we have a high probability that most
libraries will get it right! If we stay away from locking and ACLs the
library situation looks a lot brighter :)

> 3) we don't really need all these advanced
> features on top of standard HTTP, just supporting GET/PUT/DELETE for
> resources, and adding a simple folder description format, is enough
> for most applications.

Exactly!

> For the target of our ISS group, whether the WebDAV can be reused is 
> critical.

Well, my point is that there is little reason to reinvent the wheel if
the only benefit is to use JSON instead of XML for folder listings. The
amount of experience and available tooling for WebDAV is already huge!
It would be a waste to throw this away just for liking JSON better.

But maybe there are other reasons using (a limited set of) WebDAV is
impossible or unwanted...

Cheers,
François