Concluded WG Web Versioning and Configuration Management (deltav)

Note: The data for concluded WGs is occasionally incorrect.

WG Name Web Versioning and Configuration Management
Acronym deltav
Area Applications Area (app)
State Concluded
Charter charter-ietf-deltav-01 Approved
Document dependencies
Personnel Chair Jim Amsden
Mailing list Address ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
To subscribe ietf-dav-versioning-request@w3.org
Archive http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-dav-versioning/

Final Charter for 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 stand alone Web
page. Parallel development provides additional resource availability in
multi-user, distributed environments, allowing authors the choice of
making independent 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
another 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. Support for parallel development and simple remote
configuration management of Web resources provides needed functionality
for managing larger sets of interrelated content developed by multiple
users at different locations. A standard protocol for accesing such
services will ensure interoperability between many clients and many
servers.

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

Milestones

Date Milestone Associated documents
Dec 2001 Document Review for progression by Area Directors
Nov 2001 If needed based on feedback from Area Directors' review, hold an additional DeltaV Working Group Last Call
Aug 2001 Meet at London IETF '51, address remaining protocol design issues and feedback from initial Area Directors' review.
Apr 2001 Candidate DeltaV Internet Draft version 15 submitted to IETF Application Area Directors for initial review
May 2000 (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.
Apr 2000 (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.
Mar 2000 (Meeting, Specification, Model) Meet at Adelaide IETF and hold working group meeting to review the model document and
Nov 1999 (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.
Oct 1999 (Goals) Create final version of distributed versioning and configuration management goals document. Submit for approval as Informational RFC.
Oct 1999 (Specification, Model) Produce revised model document, and distributed versioning and configuration management protocol specification. Submit both as Internet Drafts.

Done milestones

Date Milestone Associated documents
Done (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.