DAV, WebDAV

 

= defines the HTTP extensions necessary to enable distributed web authoring tools to be broadly interoperable

 

DAV provides a network protocol for creating interoperable, collaborative applications. Major features of the protocol include:

• Locking (concurrency control): long-duration exclusive and shared write locks prevent the overwrite problem, where two or more collaborators write to the same resource without first merging changes. To achieve robust Internet-scale collaboration, where network connections may be disconnected arbitrarily, and for scalability, since each open connection consumes server resources, the duration of DAV locks is independent of any individual network connection.
• Properties: XML properties provide storage for arbitrary metadata, such as a list of authors on Web resources. These properties can be efficiently set, deleted, and retrieved using the DAV protocol. DASL, the DAV Searching and Locating protocol, provides searches based on property values to locate Web resources.
• Namespace manipulation: Since resources may need to be copied or moved as a Web site evolves, DAV supports copy and move operations. Collections, similar to file system directories, may be created and listed.

For more information on features, check out the article WebDAV: IETF Standard for Collaborative Authoring on the Web which appeared in IEEE Internet Computing, September/October, 1998.