DAV Searching and Locating (dasl) --------------------------------- Charter Last Modified: 2000-06-05 Current Status: Concluded Working Group Chair(s): Alex Hopmann Applications Area Director(s): Ned Freed Patrik Faltstrom Applications Area Advisor: Ned Freed Mailing Lists: General Discussion:www-webdav-dasl@w3.org To Subscribe: www-webdav-dasl-request@w3.org In Body: subscribe in body of message Archive: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-webdav-dasl/ Description of Working Group: The goal of this working group is to define and develop an extensible DAV Searching and Locating protocol as an application of HTTP. The working group will define protocol elements that enable server-executed queries to locate resources based upon their property values and text content as expressed by the DAV data model. Problem Definition WEBDAV and HTTP enable client-side searching by defining a simple set of mechanisms (the PROPFIND and GET methods) to locate those resources meeting client-defined criteria. These mechanisms can be inefficient, do not adequately deal with some simple content-based queries, and do not take advantage of the advanced querying and caching capabilities of modern storage systems. The DASL Protocol will enable a HTTP/1.1 compliant scheme for server-side searching to address these limitations. The working group will define the following for a server-side searching mechanism: - How to express the search: the syntax and semantics of a query - How to focus the query by identifying its scope - How to discover the search capability of a resource. - The syntax for the search results Working Group Scope A generalized search mechanism is a broad problem space. It encompasses a variety of object models, typing schemes, and media. By focusing on a subset of this space, the problem of locating resources based on property values and text content, the working group will leverage much of the existing work that has been done on querying under simple property and resource models. In-Scope items include: - typing - comparisons (greater than,greater than or equal to, less than, less than or equal to, !=, ==) - internationalized content - text content matching - dealing with arbitrary XML values Out-of-scope items include: - definitions of well-known properties - server-to-server communication protocols - cross-language comparisons - searching for non-text content (images, video, audio, etc.) - client control of server administration (e.g. indexing) Deliverables The final output of this working group is expected to be two documents: (1) A requirements document, that describes the high-level functional requirements for DASL, including rationale. This will be an Informational document. (2) A protocol specification describing the additions to HTTP (new methods, headers, request bodies, and response bodies) needed to implement the DASL requirements. This will be a Standards Track document. Goals and Milestones: DEC 98 Complete Scenarios document. MAR 99 Create final version of DASL requirements document. Submit to IESG for consideration as an Informational RFC. OCT 99 Complete revisions to DASL protocol. Submit to IESG for consideration as a Proposed Standard. Internet-Drafts: No Current Internet-Drafts. Request For Comments: None to date.