Mounting WebDAV Servers (RFC 4709)

Found this RFC today. Well, it's an October 2006 document, I am sorry if this is old news for you :-).

RFC 4709

It's Julian Rescke (greenbytes) again and he does a good job in not only describing an WebDAV announcement technology already used by SAP and others but also included some Windows client script to make the transparent mounting work in any native Windows environment.

Worth looking into because if you plan an infrastructure where WebDAV is used instead of file servers it is a real need to think about a link notation which does not result in the well known "browser view" of WebDAV shares but instead opens an explorer view of the data. Julian's document describes such a way.

On the other hand at least in Windows Vista it is possible to use a file share URL to connect to WebDAV:

\\server.domain@SSL\DavWWWRoot

I will try to collect some more pros and cons about the different ways to mount a WebDAV share - happy about your comments.

Windows Server 2008, the storage story

On the Windows Server Division Weblog, Claude Lorenson is writing about "the future of SMB". He delivers some very interesting details about Windows Server 2008 (Longhorn) and the new features of SMB 2.0. It's obvious that Microsoft invests in SMB, especially to make it usable for the loosely coupled branch offfice scenarios:

SMB 2.0 greatly improves the scalability of SMB 1.0; there is now more open files on a server supported as well as a higher number of shares supported. The protocols have been enhanced to reduce the “chattiness” that makes file sharing on a WAN sometimes painful. With SMB 2.0, customer data has shown the ability to download a 300MB file 35 times faster than with SMB 1.0 using a 100 Mbps link (from 24 minutes to 41 seconds). SMB2.0 will also support transactions, symbolic links and client side encryption. All these features are fully functional when Vista clients are used in combination with Windows Server 2008.

But there is also an important side note which may change a lot when planning next generation storage infrastructures:

The following sentence: "SMB2.0 will also support transactions, symbolic links and client side encryption" is not correct. Transaction support and client side encryption will not be available in Windows Server 2008 and therefore are not in the beta 3 release either.]

Wow... still no SMB encryption. I remember Microsoft is promising this feature since the late 90's. It looks like WebDAV will continue to be the only native file access protocol in Windows Clients which support communication encryption.

See the full story here:
Windows Server 2008, the storage story

Microsoft White Paper: Understanding and Troubleshooting Sharepoint Explorer View

Well, ever thought about the strange behaviors in working with Sharepoint when connecting with Windows Explorer, WebDAV, Applications File Dialog, etc?

This White Paper explains a lot:

The Explorer View feature that is included with Windows SharePoint Services and is also available in Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server lets users access files stored in the SharePoint database using the familiar Windows Explorer interface. To the end user, this appears to be a very simple and robust feature. In reality, it is the result of a complex series of interactions between many individual components provided by separate Microsoft products.

This white paper is an effort to accomplish three things:

• Provide an overview of the Explorer View architecture.

• Document the causes and resolutions of problems you are likely to encounter when using the Explorer View in a corporate environment.

• Describe basic troubleshooting steps to be performed before engaging Microsoft Customer Support Services (CSS).

Everyone working with WebDAV and/or Sharepoint should have a look into this paper - it may solve some of your day by day problems.

Source:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads