VOSpace vs WebDAV

[Paul Harrison]

On 2014-05 -15, at 07:15, Matthew Graham <mjg at cacr.caltech.edu> wrote:

> Walter,
> 
> Paul will be at the Madrid meeting so maybe you should buttonhole him there to see if his opinion has changed in the last 7 years.
> 
> -- Matthew
> 
> On May 14, 2014, at 11:09 PM, Walter Landry wrote:
> 
>> Matthew Graham <mjg at cacr.caltech.edu> wrote:
>>> Hi Walter,
>>> 
>>> This is the presentation that Paul Harrison gave in May 2007 on this subject: 
>>> 
>>> http://wiki.ivoa.net/internal/IVOA/InterOpMay2007GridAndWebServices/VOSpaceWebDAV.pdf
>> 
>> Thanks.  I have seen that presentation before.  He claims that the
>> vos: URI scheme indirection service is a feature.  But he does not
>> give any use cases where it provides an advantage.  As I noted in my
>> original email, vos: URI's feel like a reinvention of DNS.  Can you or
>> anyone else describe a use case where it becomes useful?
>> 
>> Also, on the second to last slide Paul makes the points
>> 
>> • Let’s not invent our own - WebDAV is the archetypical REST protocol.
>>   – Make sure that VOSpace is at least a minimal WebDAV server.
>> • Perhaps we could engage the WebDAV standardization groups to add VOSpace
>>   features?
>> 
>> which is definitely not what happened.  VOSpace is not a WebDAV server
>> with extensions.  If it were, the advantages of VOSpace would be more
>> clear.
>> 

I will be there and buttonhole-able, and I stand by the WebDAV bit, but as an extension I have moved even further in wanting to use http URLs for everything (something that Norman Gray has been right about for a very long time) - nothing has come close to the ubiquity of this protocol and the ivo: and vos: just do not have the client support - if we could reinvent/reinterpret ivo: and vos: URNs via redirects off a central http://ivoa.net/ service URL  so that you could use curl to get resources, I think that it would be a very good thing…


Paul.