1.8 Summary

When the Web was originally designed, it was good for reading but not writing. This meant that Web sites had to be authored with a series of nonstandard ad hoc tools. WebDAV provides a standard mechanism for authoring Web-based data. WebDAV provides a full suite of remote document access capabilities, including file storage, directory management, and support for collaborative authoring.

WebDAV is built on HTTP. WebDAV adds new functionality to HTTP but doesn't change existing functionality. This means that ordinary Web browsers can read data on WebDAV servers. It's also easy for implementers to add WebDAV functionality to existing Web clients and servers.

WebDAV was developed by the IETF's WebDAV Working Group. Work on the WebDAV began in 1996, and RFC2518, defining the first version of WebDAV, was published in 1998. WebDAV is currently a Proposed Standard and is being refined for promotion to Draft Standard.

WebDAV solves the problems of concurrent editing. Before WebDAV, it was difficult for people to collaborate on Web-based documents, because there was no standard way to coordinate their changes. WebDAV solves this problem with the introduction of locks.

WebDAV handles metadata. WebDAV provides a standardized way for clients to discover properties such as size, file type, and creation date. Clients can also attach arbitrary properties such as comments or search keywords to resources.

WebDAV can be used for more than just Web sites. WebDAV turns HTTP into a general Web-based network file system. This makes it relatively easy to build other kinds of networked applications such as document management and source control systems on top of WebDAV.