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The protocol's aim was to make the Web a readable and writable medium, in line with Tim Berners-Lee 's original vision. It provides functionality to create, change and move documents on a Remote Server (typically a web server or "web share"). This is useful for, among other things, authoring the documents which a web server serves, but can also be used for general web-based file storage that can be accessed from anywhere. Important features in WebDAV protocol include locking (overwrite prevention), properties (creation, removal, and querying of information about author, modified date, etc.), name space management (ability to copy and move Web pages within a server's Namespace ) and collections (creation, removal, and listing of resources). Most modern Operating System s provide built-in support for WebDAV. With the right client and a fast network, it can be almost as easy to use files on a WebDAV server as those stored in local Directories .

The WebDAV Working Group concluded its work in March 2007, after an incremental update to RFC2518 was accepted by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Other extensions that were unfinished at that time, such as the BIND protocol, will be finished by their individual authors outside a formal working group.


HISTORY

WebDAV began in 1996 when Jim Whitehead worked with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to host two meetings to discuss the problem of Distributed Authoring on the World Wide Web with interested people1 {Link without Title} 2.
The original vision of the Web as expounded by Tim Berners-Lee was a both readable and writable Medium . In fact Berners-Lee's first Web Browser , called WorldWideWeb , was able to both view and edit Web Page s; but, as the Web grew, it became, for most users, a read-only medium. Whitehead and other like-minded people wanted to fix that limitation.3

At the W3C meeting, it was decided that the best way to proceed was to form an IETF working group, because the new effort would lead to Extension s to HTTP , which was being standardized at the IETF.

As work began on the protocol, it became clear that handling both distributed authoring and Versioning was too much work and that the tasks would have to be separated. The WebDAV group focused on distributed authoring, and left versioning for the future. Versioning was added later by The Delta-V Extension — see the Extensions section below.

The protocol consists of a set of new methods and headers for use in HTTP and is almost certainly the first protocol ever to use XML .


DOCUMENTS PRODUCED BY THE WORKING GROUP

The WebDAV working group has to date produced several works:
  • a requirements document: "Requirements for a Distributed Authoring and Versioning Protocol for the World Wide Web" RFC 2291,

  • a base protocol document: "HTTP Extensions for Distributed Authoring — WebDAV" RFC 2518,

  • the ordered collections protocol: "Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) Ordered Collections Protocol" RFC 3648,

  • the access control protocol: "Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) Access Control Protocol" RFC 3744,

  • a quota specification: "Quota and Size Properties for Distributed Authoring and Versioning (DAV) Collections" RFC 4331,

  • a redirect specification: "Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) Redirect Reference Resources" RFC 4437, and

  • an update to the base protocol document: "HTTP Extensions for Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV)" RFC 4918.



OTHER DOCUMENTS PUBLISHED THROUGH IETF

  • the versioning protocol: "Versioning Extensions to WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning)" RFC 3253 (created by the Delta-V working group),

  • a specification of WebDAV property datatypes: "Datatypes for Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) Properties" RFC 4316,

  • a document defining how to initiate mounting of a WebDAV resource: "Mounting Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) Servers" RFC 4709, and

  • a calendar access protocol: "Calendaring Extensions to WebDAV (CalDAV)" RFC 4791.



OVERVIEW OF THE PROTOCOL

WebDAV added the following methods to HTTP:
  • PROPFIND — Used to retrieve properties, stored as XML , from a Resource . It is also Overloaded to allow one to retrieve the collection structure (a.k.a. directory hierarchy) of a Remote System .

  • PROPPATCH — Used to change and delete multiple properties on a resource in a single Atomic Act .

  • MKCOL — Used to create collections (a.k.a. Directory ).

  • COPY — Used to copy a resource from one URI to another.

  • MOVE — Used to move a resource from one URI to another.

  • LOCK — Used to put a Lock on a resource. WebDAV supports both shared and exclusive locks.

  • UNLOCK — To remove a lock from a resource.


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EXTENSIONS AND DERIVATIVES

  • For versioning, the Web Versioning And Configuration Management ( Delta-V (Internet Protocol) ) working group is the Versioning Extensions to WebDAV which put the V back into WebDAV.

  • For searching and locating, the DAV Searching And Locating (DASL) working group never produced any official standard although there are a number of implementations of its last draft (work continues as non-working-group activity, see DASL ). However another, WebDav SEARCH attempts to pick up where it left off.

  • For calendaring, CalDAV is a protocol allowing calendar access via WebDAV. CalDAV models calendar events as HTTP resources in ICalendar format, and models calendars containing events as WebDAV collections.

  • For groupware, GroupDAV is a variant of WebDAV which allows client/server Groupware systems to store and fetch objects such as calendar items and address book entries instead of web pages.



WINDOWS XP AND THE "MINI REDIRECTOR"


works only if Microsoft Office is installed on the computer. Otherwise Windows displays: 'The folder you entered does not appear to be valid. Please choose another.' when adding a network resource.


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