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Understanding the WebDAV protocol

WebDAV protocol overview  Top

The WebDAV protocol defines the HTTP extensions that enable distributed Web authoring tools to be broadly interoperable, while supporting user needs. WebDAV allows you to create HTTP directories.

How WebDAV provides support for multiple applications  Top

The WebDAV protocol provides support for remote software development teams though a wide-range of collaborative applications. WebDAV leverages the success of HTTP and acts as a standard access layer for a wide range of storage repositories. HTTP gives read access, WebDAV gives write access.

WebDAV benefits  Top

WebDAV provides a network protocol for creating interoperable, collaborative applications. Major features of this protocol include:

Locking

Long-duration exclusive and shared write locks prevent two or more collaborators from writing to the same resource without first merging changes. To achieve robust Internet-scale collaboration, where network connections may be disconnected arbitrarily, and for scalability, since each open connection consumes server resources, the duration of DAV locks is independent of any individual network connection.

Properties

XML properties provide storage for arbitrary metadata, such as a list of authors on Web resources. These properties can be efficiently set, deleted, and retrieved using the DAV protocol. DASL (DAV Searching and Locating) protocol provides searches of Web resources based on the values in XML properties.

Namespace manipulation

Since resources sometimes need to be copied or moved as the Web evolves, DAV supports copy and move operations. Collections, similar to file system directories, can be created and listed.

HTTP feature support

Data ONTAP WebDAV implementation supports your HTTP configuration settings, such as redirect rules, authentication, and access restrictions. To use WebDAV, you need to have HTTP service enabled and configured. For information about enabling and configuring HTTP, see Chapter 5, "File Access Using HTTP".

CIFS feature support

Data ONTAP WebDAV implementation supports CIFS home directories when you have valid CIFS and HTTP licenses, and you have enabled WebDAV.

To enable the WebDAV protocol, complete the following step.

Step

Action

1

From a command line, enter the following command:

options webdav.enable on

HTTP feature support  Top

The Data ONTAP WebDAV implementation supports your HTTP configuration settings, such as redirect rules, authentication, and access restrictions. To use WebDAV, you need to have HTTP service enabled and configured. For information about enabling and configuring HTTP, see File Access Using HTTP.

CIFS feature support  Top

The Data ONTAP WebDAV implementation supports CIFS home directories when you have valid CIFS and HTTP licenses, and you have enabled and configured CIFS home directories. For information about enabling and configuring home directories, see File Access Using CIFS.

Note
The Data ONTAP WebDAV implementation does not support home directory features for virtual IP addresses. URLs that specify a virtual IP address as the host will not be resolved.

To point a WebDAV client to a home directory, complete the following step.

Step

Action

1

In the navigation (or default directory) field of your WebDAV client, enter the URL using the following syntax:

http://host[:port]/~

host is the host name or IP address for the storage system.

port is the port through which you want to access the storage system.

~ is the tilde character (used to specify your user home directory).

Examples:

http://eng_filer.lab.company.com/~
http://10.120.83.104:80/~

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