As many of you are aware, the IETF WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) working group was created to develop a set of extensions to HTTP to allow interoperable remote authoring of Web resources. Though the initial mission of WebDAV was to provide services for both remote authoring *and* versioning, the versioning capabilities were dropped from the WebDAV protocol to finish the remote authoring capabilities in a timely manner. As a result, the WebDAV working group finished the Distributed Authoring Protocol, specified in RFC 2518. This protocol has facilities for overwrite prevention (LOCK, UNLOCK), namespace management (MOVE, COPY, MKCOL), and properties (PROPPATCH, PROPFIND). The WebDAV working group is continuing to work on an access control protocol, advanced collection capabilities, and a revision of RFC 2518. The WebDAV Resources site has more information on WebDAV at: http://www.webdav.org/ The WebDAV WG home page is at http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/webdav/ The DeltaV working group was formed to extend HTTP/DAV with versioning and configuration management capabilities, completing the original goal of the WebDAV working group. Some call it putting the "V" back into WebDAV. DeltaV has been developing a protocol document, "Versioning Extensions to WebDAV", <draft-ietf-deltav-versioning-08>, available at: http://www.webdav.org/deltav/protocol/draft-ietf-deltav-versioning-08.htm The protocol encompasses the ability to check-in and check-out resources, view the history tree, create private workspaces, group changes into activities, and develop configurations. It introduces several new HTTP methods, including REPORT, VERSION-CONTROL, CHECKOUT, CHECKIN, UNCHECKIN, SET-TARGET, LABEL, MKWORKSPACE, MKACTIVITY, BASELINE-CONTROL, and MERGE. It also introduces several new WebDAV properties, and has an associated versioning data model. The chair of the working group, Jim Amsden, has indicated that the DeltaV versioning protocol is going to begin a working group last call period at the end of September, thus indicating that the protocol document is stable, has resolved existing design choices, and is at a good point to receive broad community review. If you would like to examine this protocol, and provide feedback now, when it is still relatively easy to make changes, I encourage you to read the latest I-D (or working draft), and submit comments to the DeltaV mailing list. The DeltaV working group home page is: http://www.webdav.org/deltav/ The DeltaV mailing list is: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- send a message with subject line of "subscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Jim Whitehead <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Chair, WebDAV Working Group Assistant Professor, UC Santa Cruz
