[Using Sakai] WebDAV & Sakai

[Marshall Feldman]

Chuck,

I understand your point. For years Microsoft claimed to work with
WebDAV, but Microsoft's implementation was notoriously buggy.

OTOH, Cyberduck is primarily a file transfer program that can use any of
several protocols, WebDAV being one of them. WebDAV, OTOH, is a way of
using files on a web server as part of a distributed file system. Since
in any file system one can move files, Cyberduck may do a very good job
with this aspect of WebDAV on Sakai. But just because it can use this
facet of WebDAV successfully does not mean Sakai's implementation is
complete or without bugs.

So as an end user, I'm still at this point caught between several
parties pointing fingers. My local support person claims that Sakai
doesn't really support WebDAV's distributed file system feature because
Sakai keeps its files on varying machines in a cluster. Apple claims its
OS works with WebDAV, and I've used it successfully with other WebDAV
servers. So this also points to Sakai as the culprit. Some of the
responses to my original query have implied that our local configuration
of Sakai is at fault. Your reply implies that Sakai's implementation of
WebDAV works, but Cyberduck functionality is not proof, as I said.

So, I'll try a third rephrase of my question. I am concerned about Sakai
providing "fully functional" WebDAV, to any operating system or app
anywhere. By "fully functional" I am including the distributed file
system aspect. By "app," I'm allowing for a more comprehensive app than
Cyberduck, one that would actually make the local operating system see
the WebDAV server as a mounted volume, thereby working around any bugs
in the native WebDAV implementation. (For example, a company called
OpenText
<http://connectivity.opentext.com/products/network-file-system.aspx>
sells a product that lets PC's share distributed files using NFS. It
effectively adds this feature to Windows' native file system access.) So
now the question is, "Can Sakai work as a fully functional WebDAV server
with any operating system anywhere, whether through the operating
system's native WebDAV implementation or through a third-party add-on?"
Or more specifically, "Can Sakai provide distributed file system access
through WebDAV to any operating system whatsoever, whether or not a
special app provides this capability, so that files on Sakai are
readable and writable through the native file system's built-in file
access capabilities?" In other words, is the distributed file system
aspect of WebDAV successfully implemented in Sakai at all?

    Marsh

On 2/15/15 3:01 PM, Charles Severance wrote:
>
> On Feb 15, 2015, at 1:21 PM, Marshall Feldman <marsh at uri.edu
> <mailto:marsh at uri.edu>> wrote:
>
>> So, to rephrase my original question, does Sakai support WebDAV
>> client-server mounting at the level of OS X or Windows? In other
>> words, does Sakai support genuine WebDAV as implemented on the two
>> most common operating systems currently used in academia?
>
> Marshall - Sakai has a WebDav that we are confident works with
> Cyberduck and *may* work with other operating systems.  There is no
> "formal commitment" that we will do "whatever" the OS/X or Windows
> operating system happens to do.
>
> Having worked in standards and interoperability for a long time - just
> saying "we are genuine WebDav" is not at all a guarantee of
> interoperability.  
>
> Our WebDav code is based on an WebDav from 2004 and we have made a few
> improvements  since then.  The operating systems feel no compunction
> to be careful in using WebDav to maintain interoperability with
> anything other than their own implementations.  CyberDuck is more
> interoperable because since they are neither Microsoft nor Apple -
> they need to be a little more careful how they implement WebDav so as
> to remain interoperable.
>
> Since our webdav is so old, it would take a lot of resources to try to
> find and fix all the issues to guarantee it works with Mac/Windows.
>
> If we had a lot of resources, we might start over with a more modern
> WebDav protocol implementation like this:
>
> http://milton.io/
>
> So for now, we can use WebDav if it works but we don't consider
> "WebDav not working on Windows" a "bug".  We need to work on things
> like getting rid of iframes :)  Of course if someone felt strongly
> about fixing it - they could take the initiative and build us a new
> WebDav :)
>
> /Chuck

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