[Using Sakai] WebDAV & Sakai

[Laura Gekeler]

Well now you've gone and done it Marshall... all this WebDAV stuff aside,
what we're really pointing out here is that we believe file system access
to files in a Sakai course site repository should be accessible outside of
Sakai, isn't that it?  We'd like to use end points and sharing from many
different places, including:


   - mounted and behaving like a native part of the OS file system.
   - using 3rd party tools like Cyberduck
   - and inside Sakai too, we should be able to copy or link to a Sakai
   file in another course site, if we want.
   - How about from inside an ePortfolio system, so students can choose the
   same file they submitted for an assignment, as part of a portfolio they're
   building?
   - What about learning analytics? At some point we're going to need to
   search files from their linked endpoints (or otherwise traceable copies) in
   our analytics data warehouse in order to do text mining of assignments in
   the spring of 2015, of sophomores, which received A's ....


WebDAV isn't the solution (interim maybe), but something like WebDAV
expresses the requirements for the beginning of a solution. Such a solution
will be at the core of a learning ecosystem.

IMO
Laura


Laura Gekeler
LMS Administrator //Concurrent Instructor
Teaching and Learning Technologies
University of Notre Dame
P:(1) 574-631-2402


On 15 February 2015 at 16:08, Marshall Feldman <marsh at uri.edu> wrote:

>  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> 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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