Re: I-D Action:draft-reschke-webdav-post-00.txt

[Petr Tomasek <[e-mail]>]

> >Hi,
> >
> >I dislike the fact, that a simple task like creating a new resource
> >should constitute complicated metadata creating/parsing.
> >
> >I think a simple method (I would choose another one, not the POST
> >one, but e.g. "CREATE") would be more suitable to the HTTP model.
> 
> I proposed that one ("ADDMEMBER", see 
> <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-reschke-http-addmember-00>) over three 
> years ago, and the feedback from the HTTP community I got was: "not 
> needed, just use POST").

Yes I know, but the "HTTP community" is simply wrong. There are fundamental
differences of how POST and the supposed ADDMEMBER would work:
 - most important, POST generetas response body, while ADDMEMBER would never.
I.e. POST is a mixture of PUT and GET, while ADDMEMBER would be a special case
of PUT.
 - with POST the data structure is not defined and is completely up to
the application.

> The new proposal addresses that feedback -- it makes POST usable for 
> WebDAV collections.
> 
> >Please, note, not everything on the earth "is WebDAV" and it seems
> >to mee that forcing using XML everywhere, even if it is not necessary
> >is simply an error (it leads to too complicated protocols and too
> >much overhead for implementing them...)
> 
> This is a proposal specifically for WebDAV. Thus I think it's totally 

Yes, and that's wrong, because this sort of action is genereal enough
to be used outside of the scope of WebDAV....

> acceptable that the information lives in WebDAV properties.
> 
> (That being said, I strongly disagree with the assumption that using XML 
> itself is a problem; see for instance AtomPub which uses exactly the 
> same approach)

It may be problem e.g. for embedded devices with very low resources
(have ever tried to implement something for 8bit MCU like Atmel AVR's?
But there are working implementations of TCP/HTTP stack for such small
devices; adding XML would perhaps double the code for such an implementation!)

> 
> BR, Julian

-- 
Petr Tomasek <http://www.etf.cuni.cz/~tomasek>
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