Hi all,

I have a property that defines all categories of a particular resource with values like this:


catA
catD
catE


How can I define a DASL query that returns all resources of a particular category?

Is this possible?

It seems the DAV:contains and xsv:xpath operators only operate on resource content not on properties.

Is there any other way to meet this particular use case?

TIA
Guido

Hi Guido,

you are right, DAV:contains and xsv:xpath operators only operates on content.

So if I understand you right, you PROPPATCHed something like:

<D:set>
<D:prop>

catA
catD
catE

</D:prop>
</D:set>

In means of webDAV this is one property, categories, with the string value of catAcatDcatE.

So an XPATH query on this String makes no sense. What would help is the optional DAV:LIKE operator, which will be available in one of our next versions.

Regards,
Martin

Hello Martin,

Guido has presented a good application for WebDAV. It is a misunderstanding on your side to assume properties having string values. Prominent examples of XML valued properties are DAV:lockdiscovery and DAV:supportedlock. It is good practise to define dead properties having XML values as Guido has done. This way you make use of the real strength of WebDAV.

So a XPath query on property values makes a lot of sense !

XPath queries are defined in the current DASL draft neither for content nor for properties. In extending this draft to include XPath one should support property search as well as content search. In fact, a document management system would rather use WebDAV content for binary data and properties for XML meta data. So XPath on properies is more important.
I hope Tamino will support this feature in future versions.

Regards,
Roland

Hi Roland,

I agree that properties often have xml like values, and this of course makes a lot of sense. It is lack of the current WebDAV specification, that there is no “XML type” for property values.

Internally we are discussing about having this datatype. Then of course xpath query on properties will make sense.

Best regards,
Martin