Forum OpenACS Development: WebDAV Implementation for OpenACS

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1: WebDAV Implementation for OpenACS
Posted by Alfred Essa on 07/21/03 06:34 PM
At the open source conference Talli and I discussed the need and feasibility for implementing WebDAV.

First, let me provide an end user perspective. File manager is probably the most important and heavily used package in dotLRN. Our users like dotLRN but consistently complain about the clunky interface. I think adding WebDAV support would probably be the most important contribution we could make on behalf of end users.

Second, from a technical perspective I think it's important to have WebDAV support in AOL Server.  There were a number of sessions at the open world conference on WebDAV and it's clear that it's becoming a very important standard for both proprietary and open source development. I would encourage OpenACS developers to begin looking at this.

Talli has already begun some work in this area and I have asked him to provide an update to the community. Depending on the scope, we might be able to fund the effort or at least get it going. Any and all feedback is welcome.

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2: Re: WebDAV Implementation for OpenACS (response to 1)
Posted by Tomasz Kosiak on 07/22/03 07:19 PM
Some time ago I took a look into AOLserver WebDAV from Musea Technologies (Talli Somekh company). It was rather experimental version and failed to work with Microsoft Explorer WebDAV (Open/Web Folder). But maybe it has improved since that. As far as I remember it was derived from Apache mod_webdav. Now in our solutions we use nsvhr proxing to Apache to do the WebDAV for our clients.

Anyway I'm very interested in having WebDAV in AOLserver - especially integrated with our CMS. We also thought about sponsoring such development. We know one person (Polish programmer) who probably can do it. I belive we cannnot help  much in sponsoring such development in the US, because of difference in salaries in our countries. But if you help us to pay somone in Poland it could be feasable.

I could contact such person, but I need more precise specification what has to be done.

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3: Re: WebDAV Implementation for OpenACS (response to 1)
Posted by Talli Somekh on 07/22/03 07:24 PM
Unfortunately, it seems that WebFolders doesn't like to play very well with anything other than IIS (imagine that).

More soon...

talli

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4: Re: WebDAV Implementation for OpenACS (response to 1)
Posted by Dave Bauer on 07/22/03 07:43 PM
From the information I learned at Greg Stein's talk at OSCOM, mod_dav also has the same issues with some implementations of Web Folders. There are something like 40 different implementations of "Web Folders" from Microsoft,all incompatible in different ways.

ns_dav was build on mod_dav so any compatibility problems generally would exist in both.

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5: Re: WebDAV Implementation for OpenACS (response to 1)
Posted by Mark Aufflick on 07/23/03 01:59 AM
Russell also reported to me the same issue - code that works with various stand alone dav clients doesn't necessarily work with either windows web folders or the MacOS X builtin dav client.
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6: Re: WebDAV Implementation for OpenACS (response to 1)
Posted by russ m on 07/23/03 02:12 AM
my issues aren't (yet) something I'd lay at microsoft's door... rather than porting an existing DAV server into AOLserver as ns_dav is doing, I'm putting together a minimal (currently read-only) server in TCL using tDOM for all the XML-ish bits.

I have enough of the spec implemented to work with the standalone cadaver and Goliath clients, but the problems with WebFoldes and the OSX WebDAV client are due to the current incompleteness of my implementation.

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7: Re: WebDAV Implementation for OpenACS (response to 1)
Posted by Jerry Asher on 07/25/03 01:48 PM
Over at /., Vito just asked a very similar question, and as so far received very similar answers. My suspicion: WebDAV will become interoperable in about five years. If then.
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8: Re: WebDAV Implementation for OpenACS (response to 1)
Posted by shareen khan on 04/30/06 08:04 PM
Hi,

Please please, can someone help. It a question regarding webdav, wanted to ask how the implementation of webdav differs from manually coding server implementation, for example the versioning can be coded in, not necessary to use webdav, and the lcking techinque can also be implmented, why would someone therefore want to use webdav is it easeir to implement, i understadnd the dav module has to be attached is this precess easeir how does it wrk.

Can somone please help im desperate.