2.1.12 Web Versioning and Configuration Management (deltav)

NOTE: This charter is a snapshot of the 47th IETF Meeting in Adelaide, Australia. It may now be out-of-date. Last Modified: 29-Feb-00

Chair(s):

Jim Amsden <jamsden@us.ibm.com>

Applications Area Director(s):

Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>
Patrik Faltstrom <paf@swip.net>

Applications Area Advisor:

Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>

Mailing Lists:

General Discussion:ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
To Subscribe: ietf-dav-versioning-request@w3.org
In Body: subscribe
Archive: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-dav-versioning/

Description of Working Group:

This working group will define extensions to HTTP and the WebDAV Distributed Authoring Protocol necessary to enable distributed Web authoring tools to perform, in an interoperable manner, versioning and configuration management of Web resources.

Versioning, parallel development, and configuration management are important features for remote authoring of Web content. Version management is concerned with tracking and accessing the history of important states of a single Web resource, such as a standalone Web page. Parallel development provides additional resource availability in multi-user, distributed environments, letting authors make changes on the same resource at the same time, later merging together those changes. Configuration management addresses the problems of tracking and accessing multiple interrelated resources over time as sets of resources, not simply individual resources. Traditionally, artifacts of software development, including code, design, test cases, requirements, help files, and more have been a focus of configuration management. Web sites, comprised of multiple inter-linked resources (HTML, graphics, sound, CGI, and others), are an important class of complex information artifacts that benefit from the application of configuration management.

The WebDAV working group originally focused on defining version management capabilities for remote authoring applications. However, it has become clear that while versioning functionality alone is useful for a range of content authoring scenarios involving one, or a small set of resources, versioning alone is insufficient for managing larger sets of content. Protocol support for parallel development and simple remote configuration management of Web resources provides functionality for managing larger sets of interrelated content developed by multiple users at different locations.

A sub-group of the WebDAV working group has developed functional requirements for versioning and configuration management of Web content. These requirements encompass the following capabilities, which shall be considered by this working group:

IN-SCOPE:

* Naming and accessing resource versions and configurations

* Creating new revisions of a resource

* Placing a resource under version and configuration control

* Parallel development

* History retrieval

* Differencing

* Merging of revisions and configurations

* Operations on configurations

* Mapping resource versions and configurations to the URL namespace

* Versioning support for downlevel HTTP and WebDAV clients

Further information on these objectives can be found in the document, "Goals for Web Versioning".

NOT IN SCOPE:

* HTTP server to server communication protocols

* Development process management, workflow, or change request management

* Versioning and configuration management via non-HTTP and WebDAV protocols.

* Implementation of functionality by non-origin proxies

Deliverables

The following documents are expected to form the final output of this working group.

1. A goals document, which describes the high-level functional requirements for remote versioning and configuration management, including rationale.

2. A model document, which describes the semantics of versioning, configuration management, and parallel development in a protocol independent fashion.

3. A protocol specification, which describes new HTTP methods, headers, request bodies, response bodies, and WebDAV properties to implement the remote versioning and configuration management goals.

4. A traceability document, which describes the mapping between goals and protocol features.

Goals and Milestones:

Oct 99

  

(Goals) Create final version of distributed versioning and configuration management goals document. Submit for approval as Informational RFC.

Oct 99

  

(Specification, Model) Produce revised model document, and distributed versioning and configuration management protocol specification. Submit both as Internet Drafts.

Nov 99

  

(Meeting, Specification, Model) Meet at Washington, DC IETF and hold working group meeting to review the model document and the distributed versioning and configuration management protocol specification.

Feb 00

  

(Specification, Model, Traceability) Submit revised model document, and distributed versioning and configuration management protocol specification as Internet Drafts. Submit revised traceability document as an Internet Draft.

Mar 00

  

(Meeting, Specification, Model) Meet at Adelaide IETF and hold working group meeting to review the model document and

Apr 00

  

(Specification, Model, Traceability) Submit revised model document, distributed versioning and configuration management protocol specification, and traceability document as Internet Drafts. Hold working group last call for comments on all drafts.

May 00

  

(Specification, Model, Traceabiluty) Revise model document, distributed versioning and configuration management specification, and traceability document based on WG last call comments, and submit specification to the IESG for approval as a Proposed Standard RFC, and submit the model and traceability documents to IESG as Informational RFCs.

Internet-Drafts:

No Request For Comments

Current Meeting Report

None received.

Slides

None received.