Provides a standard way to place content on a web server, with metadata, file locking, versioning. Also can decouple filesystem layout from author’s view. Uses HTTP for all logins, so no need to create full user accounts.

Very few clients support metadata so far. Cadaver does, but cmd-line based. Kcera? KExplorer? support properties.

To check out: Joe Orton’s sitecopy. Twingle.

WebDAV for filesharing tested lighter than SMB on network traffic.

Question on ranged PUTs. WebDAV and mod_dav support it, but some servers don’t. The Mac OS X WebDAV client can’t use ranged PUTs for this reason, or it would risk replacing the entire file with the tiny part that was changed. They’re working toward some kind of solution.

Servers include Apache mod_dav (which the speaker wrote) and Zope, Tomcat. Jakarta Slide requires a lot of work to connect its memory-based store to something. Can even handle WebDAV with CGI except for OPTIONS method.

Subversion supports DeltaV WebDAV. You can mount & copy files from vanilla Windows & Mac OS X. But you can’t modify them, because the client don’t support DeltaV. (There is an experimental “autoversion” plugin to server to allow this.)

Extensions: ACL. Remote management of ACLs; close to RFC status. DASL (DAV Searching & Locating). Yet another query language. Further off.

MS WebDAV does a little check for FrontPage first, but is pretty much straight WebDAV otherwise.

My question: best/simplest route to implement a change trigger for a WebDAV server, so I could run a script? Can I plug in easily to any of the existing servers?

A. Zope supports WebDAV and is programmable. It uses its own data store, though, not the filesystem. So the whole system would have to use Zope.

Best answer. Could look at logs / an Apache filter to implement change response. Great idea.

Alternative: Author of FS watch & notify utils suggested those. They only run on Unixes, though. (I need Windows support, so I could look into NT’s APIs for filesystem notification too.)