[CalendarServer-users] freebusy file url

[Helge Heß]

On 28.07.2008, at 15:59, Cyrus Daboo wrote:
>> The ifb file for compatibility might be a
>> good idea but I think the biggest advantage
>> of the report is that it lets you specify the
>> date range.
> The freebusy URL work being done by CalConnect will allow  
> specification of a date/time range as query parameters on the URL.

Yes, most servers support such query parameters. (btw the format  
should be selected by the HTTP accept header?)

Anyways, in the far majority of scheduling cases it doesn't really  
matter. Freebusy info which goes a year into the future is usually  
useless (except for VIPs who are really booked for a year ahead :-).

IMHO the vCard+ifb solution is pretty good from a real world  
perspective, the wished-for timerange can be selected once in the IFB  
URL of the contact. (say /users/sjobs/cal/freebusy?range=PT1Y for some  
CEO and /users/hh/cal/freebusy?range=PT4W for me ;-)
We don't even need query-para standards for that (though its nice to  
have).

>> It also allows retrieving many FBs in one
>> request.  Which probably helps with client
>> speed dealing with large meetings.
> It is true that the CalDAV Access freebusy-query REPORT is limited  
> to a single calendar and thus is not useful in a true "scheudling  
> scenario" At that point the CalDAV schedule VFREEBUSY REQUEST is the  
> appropriate solution.

I don't know. Such scenarios only work well if all attendees use  
CalDAV servers, ideally the same server system. Or the local CalDAV  
server would need to act as a proxy/gateway which is also suboptimal.
IFB-GETs are cross-domain, cross-server and already work just fine  
with a lot of deployed systems. Same goes for iMIP vs CalDAV  
scheduling IMHO.

Also IMHO its not really something which needs to be optimized. If I  
plan a meeting with 10 people, thats 10 trivial, Squid'able HTTP GETs.  
So what? :-)

Thanks,
   Helge
-- 
Helge Hess
http://helgehess.eu/