Online Representation of Markus KARG
Head Crashing Informatics
Exceptional Information Technology Products and Services
Online Representation of Markus KARG
Exceptional Information Technology Products and Services
Bringing WebDAV to the Java World
Typically you need another proprietary GUI for each new application (CRM, ERP, etc.) you like to use. That's rather nasty. Wouldn't it be cool to just access the data and services of the application by just touching them like files on a remote hard disk? Now you can. The WebDAV Project provides the plugs needed to enable your application to get plugged directly into the file system.
WebServices are rather popular these days. While the mainstream way to implement them is typically based on heavyweight SOAP, lightweight RESTful services more and more gain attention. A special kind of RESTful WebServices are not just using core HTTP commands, but instead utilize the WebDAV protocol. Those type of services are rather seldom, nevertheless providing an outstanding client experience, as one does not need a specialized client software: A WebDAV WebService can be used with any WebDAV client, explicitly naming file system drivers here. Using such an operating system's part (which is a standard component of any modern operating system), a user can interact with a WebService without knowing it: He just drops files to a virtual drive, which in fact is a remote WebDAV WebService. That makes using software much, much easier, as one can virtually touch the actual data directly without being forced to learn another fancy client GUI.
This LPGL'ed open source project, founded and let by me and currently driven mostly by me and Daniel MANZKE, provides two main features: A JAX-RS based WebDAV library for Java, making it at most easy while keeping feature-richness to implement a WebDAV based RESTful WebService (webdav-jaxrs), and an intermediate, 100% standards compliant, XSL based Servlet API Filter component providing out-of-the-box compatibility to those WebDAV clients being part of Microsoft's different Windows Operating Systems by patching requests and responses on the fly to fulfil the somewhat strange syntactical format Microsoft Windows enforces (webdav-interop). The library and the filter both are 100% standards compliant and will work with any JAX-RS / Servlet engine on the market. Despite to competitive approaches, this solution is in no way dependent of any particular product.
As a result, both parts are exceptional in the core idea of what they provide, and how they provide it.
The WebDAV Project's software components are in commercial use by several known companies, e. g. in some EADS software products, and was covered by German iX magazine 9/2009.
Commercial support is available: Please request pricing and conditions by email.
