familiar to the user.  XML's support for multiple human languages,




 
RFC 2518                         WEBDAV                    February 1999


   using the "xml:lang" attribute, handles cases where the same
   character set is employed by multiple human languages.

4.5 Property Names

   A property name is a universally unique identifier that is associated
   with a schema that provides information about the syntax and
   semantics of the property.

   Because a property's name is universally unique, clients can depend
   upon consistent behavior for a particular property across multiple
   resources, on the same and across different servers, so long as that
   property is "live" on the resources in question, and the
   implementation of the live property is faithful to its definition.

   The XML namespace mechanism, which is based on URIs [RFC2396], is
   used to name properties because it prevents namespace collisions and
   provides for varying degrees of administrative control.

   The property namespace is flat; that is, no hierarchy of properties
   is explicitly recognized.  Thus, if a property A and a property A/B
   exist on a resource, there is no recognition of any relationship
   between the two properties.  It is expected that a separate
   specification will eventually be produced which will address issues
   relating to hierarchical properties.

   Finally, it is not possible to define the same property twice on a
   single resource, as this would cause a collision in the resource's
   property namespace.

4.6 Media Independent Links

   Although HTML resources support links to other resources, the Web
   needs more general support for links between resources of any media
   type (media types are also known as MIME types, or content types).
   WebDAV provides such links. A WebDAV link is a special type of
   property value, formally defined in section 12.4, that allows typed
   connections to be established between resources of any media type.
   The property value consists of source and destination Uniform
   Resource Identifiers (URIs); the property name identifies the link
   type.











 
RFC 2518                         WEBDAV                    February 1999


5  Collections of Web Resources

   This section provides a description of a new type of Web resource,
   the collection, and discusses its interactions with the HTTP URL
   namespace. The purpose of a collection resource is to model
   collection-like objects (e.g., file system directories) within a
   server's namespace.

   All DAV compliant resources MUST support the HTTP URL namespace model
   specified herein.

5.1 HTTP URL Namespace Model

   The HTTP URL namespace is a hierarchical namespace where the
   hierarchy is delimited with the "/" character.

   An HTTP URL namespace is said to be consistent if it meets the
   following conditions: for every URL in the HTTP hierarchy there
   exists a collection that contains that URL as an internal member.
   The root, or top-level collection of the namespace under
   consideration is exempt from the previous rule.

   Neither HTTP/1.1 nor WebDAV require that the entire HTTP URL
   namespace be consistent.  However, certain WebDAV methods are
   prohibited from producing results that cause namespace
   inconsistencies.

   Although implicit in [RFC2068] and [RFC2396], any resource, including
   collection resources, MAY be identified by more than one URI. For
   example, a resource could be identified by multiple HTTP URLs.

5.2 Collection Resources

   A collection is a resource whose state consists of at least a list of
   internal member URIs and a set of properties, but which may have