A One Minute Guide to WebDAV 

What is WebDAV?

WebDAV (more commonly called DAV) is an acronym for "Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning". It is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol. However unlike HTML which only gives you browse (read) access, WebDAV allows users to collaboratively read, write and update. 

More importantly for us, WebDAV will introduce light weight CM facilities like versioning.

What are the Goals of WebDAV?

The goal of WebDAV is to resolve the current limitations in global information sharing i.e. to provide an "open" solution to existing editor collaboration problems.

Note existing collaboration problems include:

+ No collaboration industry standards (each to there own)
+ Uncontrollable Email Submissions
+ Cumbersome Document Integration (e.g. Document Merging) 
+ Documents are vulnerable to being lost in the ether
+ Clumsy Versioning

+ Requirement for people to change there preferred editors (clients)
+ No seamless Client to Document accessibility

Ultimately WebDAV will provide us with an open protocol that will support Distributed Web authoring, administration and browsing. A bit like the way your organisation may already support Intranet collaboration through Wiki and CM tools.

WebDAV's HTTP Extensions
  

In addition to retaining the key benefits of HTTP e.g. global access, authentication, encryption etc, WebDAV will provide the following key extensions:

+ Cool Namespace facilities (add, delete, edit, move, copy)
+ Access Control

+ Properties (CM Meta Data i.e. attaching value-pairs to your pages)

+ Search facilities (including values inside properties)

+ Light Weight Versioning (Checkin, Checkout, Histories)

+ Concurrency Control (via file write locks)

+ Supports all content (not just HTML)

+ Open Protocol that can be used by any client (non proprietary)

Some Major Uses of WebDAV

The WC3 charter states its goal is to "define the HTTP extensions necessary to enable distributed Web authoring tools to be broadly interoperable, while supporting user needs."

Following that line of thought, some major uses of WebDAV might include:

+ Using a DAV server as a Remote Data Repository

+ Using a DAV server for Collaborative Authoring

+ Supporting Distributed Software Engineering

+ Developing a Remote Document Management System

The History of WebDAV

1996 WC3 discussions start on Remote Authoring (Chairman Jim Whitehead)

1998 Spec accepted by IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force)

1999 RFC2518 is issued (Document excludes versioning)

2000 Delta-V (Version extensions for WebDAV) scenarios explored

2002 RFC3253 is issued (WebDAV Versioning)

Want to know more
  
http://www.webdav.org
http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/webdav/
 

Copyright © 2002 SnuffyBear Company (Sydney Australia).