<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Hi Walter,<div><br></div><div>This is the presentation that Paul Harrison gave in May 2007 on this subject: </div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://wiki.ivoa.net/internal/IVOA/InterOpMay2007GridAndWebServices/VOSpaceWebDAV.pdf">http://wiki.ivoa.net/internal/IVOA/InterOpMay2007GridAndWebServices/VOSpaceWebDAV.pdf</a></div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Cheers,</div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Matthew</div><div><br><div><div>On May 14, 2014, at 10:19 PM, Walter Landry wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>Hello Everyone,<br><br>At our datacenter, we want to implement some kind of workspace for our<br>users. So the natural thing to do is to look at VOSpace and see if it<br>could be bent to our needs. However, I am also familiar with WebDAV [1],<br>and I am having a hard time understanding what advantages VOSpace<br>brings. Just to run down the basics about WebDAV:<br><br>1) WebDAV supports much of the functionality in VOSpace, including<br> all of these items lifted directly from the VOSpace introduction<br><br> * add or delete data objects<br> * manipulate metadata for the data objects<br> * obtain URIs through which the content of the data objects can be<br> accessed<br><br>2) WebDAV is a mature, established standard deployed worldwide on a<br> variety of machines. Every major desktop OS has WebDAV built in,<br> and you can get clients and servers for every operating system on<br> almost any hardware, including phones, tablets, and supercomputers.<br><br>3) WebDAV has a number of implementations of the client and server in<br> every programming language you can think of.<br><br>4) WebDAV is based on http, so it is easy to layer any of a number of<br> authentication schemes on top.<br><br>5) WebDAV has an easily understood filesystem-like API.<br><br>In contrast, the only compelling feature of VOSpace I can think of is<br>the ability to initiate 3rd party transfers. But it would seem better<br>to add a trivial extension to WebDAV rather than creating a completely<br>new protocol.<br><br>Moreover, the API for VOSpace is much more complicated, with a lot of<br>indirection. The vos: URI scheme in particular feels like a<br>reinvention of DNS for a benefit that I do not see. It almost goes<br>without saying that I have not seen much interest in VOSpace outside<br>of astronomy.<br><br>Given all this, it feels like the best use of my time would be to<br>install mod_dav on my Apache server and be done in short order. I<br>would guess that my users would even be happier than if I used<br>VOSpace. It is pretty addictive to be able to drag and drop from your<br>desktop to a remote WebDAV folder using the standard file browser.<br><br>Now, I am aware that this has been discussed before. I have also<br>spoken personally with one of the authors of VOSpace. Yet I still do<br>not quite see the need for VOSpace. Could someone enlighten me?<br><br>Thanks,<br>Walter Landry<br><a href="mailto:wlandry@caltech.edu">wlandry@caltech.edu</a><br><br>[1] http://webdav.org/<br>[2] http://www.ivoa.net/forum/grid/2007-March/001713.html<br> http://www.us-vo.org/pipermail/techwg/2005-February/000793.html<br><br></div></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>