* Web-distributed Authoring and Versioning
Last week, in talking about iFolder winning a prestigious award, I mentioned that more than one user has asked Novell how to limit iFolder users to no more than one simultaneous connection. I was at a loss to explain what this particular user hoped to accomplish, but others had asked about using iFolder as a collaborative environment where a group of users would share access to documents they could all work on.
I’ve mentioned other file access technologies in NetWare 6 (I did a six-part series on them a year ago, beginning with https://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/netware/2002/01318623.html) and have suggested one or two as an alternative to iFolder but, remarkably, there’s still another method I overlooked and which one astute reader pointed out is the best choice for collaboration – WebDAV.
WebDAV, which stands for Web-distributed Authoring and Versioning, is an industry standard protocol. It is an enhancement to the HTTP protocol, turning the Web into a document database that enables collaborative creation, editing and searching from remote locations. Whereas HTTP only supports the reading of files, WebDAV enables documents to be written using HTTP. Because of WebDAV’s versioning control, users can use a Web browser to write, edit and save shared documents without overwriting each other’s work.
Your NetWare 6 documentation (see “Managing Server Content” – its online at https://www.novell.com/documentation/lg/nw6p/adminenu/data/ac1m164.html if you aren’t near your NetWare manual CDs) gives you all you need to know to implement a WebDAV document versioning system.
As with almost all Internet protocols, WebDAV comes with its own support group, online at https://www.webdav.org/ where you can find out more about implementing WebDAV projects and services. Did you know, for example, that Lifli (https://www.lifli.com/) offers iBlog, a Mac-based Weblog authoring program? It saves Weblog data to a remote WebDAV server using Apple’s iDisk, which maps a WebDAV server to a Mac drive. Probably not high on your list of priorities, still it’s nice to know it’s available if you need it.
WebDAV might get overlooked because of a presumption that it’s intended primarily for HTML documents, but as its Frequently Asked Questions document (https://www.webdav.org/other/faq.html) notes, “WebDAV provides authoring support for Web resources of any media type, be they HTML, GIF, JPEG, or other. The versioning extensions also have a primary goal of supporting versioning of any media type, not just text-based objects.”
To bring this discussion full circle, WebDAV is one of the allowed access methods for iFolder. Take a look at Novell’s “Deploying WebDAV” document (https://www.novell.com/info/collateral/docs/4621211.01/4621211.pdf) for all the details.
