[Protocol bits] Is WebDAV RESTful?

[Mark Baker]

On Fri, May 17, 2002 at 06:30:31PM -0700, Elias Sinderson wrote:
> The 207 responses seem similar to multi-part MIME encodings... I agree
> that this is not very RESTful, but it certainly doesn't stretch the
> principles of REST beyond what has already been done by HTTP/1.1.
> I think that what we are seeing here is a tension between the ideals of
> an architectural style and the concessions made in the implementation of
> that style for the sake of performance.

Insofar as REST is descriptive, and not prescriptive, that there
exists multiple interoperable implementations of Multi-status, and that
it adds value, I'd say that it probably could be counted as part of it.

To me, it seems clear that PROPFIND should have been done with GET.
LOCK *could* also have been done with PUT, but I wouldn't go so far to
say that it *should* have been.

As for other WebDAV related stuff, I saw a DASL draft recirculating
recently.  DASL should use GET too (or my POST/201/GET idiom), not
SEARCH.

BTW, as an aside, I noticed that the Infoworld article that Rohit
mentioned was later updated to cut out my quote!  Bah.

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/05/13/020513hnsoap.xml
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/05/10/020510hnsoapdebate.xml

MB
-- 
Mark Baker, CTO, Idokorro Mobile (formerly Planetfred)
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.               distobj@acm.org
http://www.markbaker.ca        http://www.idokorro.com