Subject: Re: Why are WebDAV's XML namespace rules different than the W3C's?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 08:07:46 -0500

It is my understanding that the meaning of an XML namespace with respect to
its tags is completely up to the application. Therefore WebDAV is not at
odds with W3C namespace rules. WebDAV servers that concatenate namespace
with tag to form an identifier will interoperate just fine. The alternative
is to keep them separate but always match on both. DAV4J keeps the
namespace, prefix, and property identifier separate in the API, but
normalizes them in the server for matching. That is, a:foo and b: foo are
the same thing if a and b are the same namespace. This is not the case with
XML as these are considered different tags, but applications are free to
treat them as having the same semantics. From WebDAV's point of view, these
different tags represent the same property name. I think it would be a bad
thing if this were not true.

Greg Stein <[email-masked]>@w3.org on 12/28/99 09:28:36 PM

Sent by:  [email-masked]

To:   "Yaron Goland (Exchange)" <[email-masked]>
cc:   WebDAV WG <[email-masked]>

Subject:  Re: Why are WebDAV's XML namespace rules different than the
      W3C's?

On Tue, 28 Dec 1999, Yaron Goland (Exchange) wrote:
> I was cleaning up my mail box when I found a letter I had written
explaining
> the differences between the W3C's rules for handling namespaces and
> WebDAV's. In the end I believe that everyone adopted the W3C's rules but
> this does introduce a very serious interoperability issue that
implementers
> need to be aware of. Anyone who actually is supporting section 23.4.2
> (which, in so far as I know, nobody does) is well advised to re-write
their
> code to maintain the separation between namespace and element name.

Excellent writeup, Yaron. I'll get this added to your Book Of Why on
webdav.org :-)

FWIW, mod_dav does not obey 23.4.2 -- it treats the namespace and name as
a tuple, rather than concatenating them.

Cheers,
-g

--
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/

---

From: Jim Davis <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 18:38:47 +0100

At 04:43 PM 12/28/99 -0800, Yaron Goland (Exchange) wrote: 
> Anyone who actually is supporting section 23.4.2 (which, in so far as I
know, nobody does) 

Well, the xml library that I wrote to support the Xerox PARC Python WebDAV
server does.
I saw Greg Stein's email saying mod_dav does not follow 23.4.2

Any one else?

> is well advised to re-write their code to maintain the separation between
namespace 
> and element name.

So you are proposing that we drop 23.4.2 from WebDAV?

Sigh.  I suppose that, if the entire rest of the XML world does in fact
follow the convention that namespaces are distinct from element names, then
WebDAV may as well switch to follow them.  What a pain in the neck!