Re: CAP Searching Proposal

[Doug Royer <Doug.Royer@xxxxxxx>]

> Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 03:07:29 +0000
> From: John Stracke <francis@ecal.com>
> 
> Frank Dawson wrote:
> 
> > Doug Royer and I have been working since the last IETF meeting on a proposal
> > for a "search" mechanism for CAP. Our approach was to build on the existing
> > market acceptance of SQL functionality and map this to the existing
> > iCalendar syntax.
> 
> It just occurred to me that an alternative would be to define a mapping
> of the calendar information into the namespace of a Web server, and then
> search it with DASL (an HTTP-based protocol being developed for searching
> the contents of a server).  The mapping would have the nice side effect
> that any calendar entry would be available to downlevel browsers via GET,
> which makes for a convenient migration path for implementors--just write
> a plugin/helper app that understands iCal, and you can get events into
> your calendar.  It's not particularly full-featured, but it's a useful
> start.

The problem with the DASL proposal is that its ~almost~ SQL. And I think
that is an issue. I talked to Alex Hoppman about this in Orlando;
he told me the reason that its NOT SQL, is because they needed some
features that were not in SQL. I still don't see why they can't say
is SQL (version xxx) + plus this or - that's our plan.

It looks to *me* as if the XML vs iCalendar debase seems to be over. CAP
is going to be iCalendar objects as a MUST with the iCalendar object
rendered as XML as an optional capability. With the details of the XML
extension as a separate draft/rfc.

Have you seen ietf-many-ical-xmldoc-00.txt ?  I do feel that there
needs to be an XML story. I also strongly feel that CAP MUST
have iCalendar objects by default.

-Doug
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