What is WebDAV?
Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning is an extension of the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and allows clients to perform authoring operations remotely on web-based servers. In the context of Safe4, this means that documents held in an editable format in a Safe4 vault can be opened and edited using the application that created them, provided that appropriate permissions have been granted to the user and the files in question.
The concept of WebDAV was first implemented in 1996. Even though the original version of the world-wide-web developed by Tim Berners-Lee was envisaged to be for read and write functions, the internet as we know it today has largely grown as a set of read-only resources. When using a web browser, Safe4 does not permit any stored files to be altered without downloading them first and then re-uploading them. WebDAV permits the file to be opened using the mother application, edited as required, and then saved back into Safe4 as a new version of the original file. Safe4’s native versioning functions will record the edited file as a new version, and will retain the original and update the history for that specific file. Under both circumstances, Safe4 does not allow the original version of the file to be altered – this provides maximum support for the use of Safe4 as an evidential system of record.
Standard operating systems from Microsoft and Apple have implemented WebDAV, but use slightly different nomenclature to allow it to be used on the device in question. This document contains basic descriptions of setting up WebDAV for both operating systems’ environments.
