catacomb
Project home

Catacomb is a WebDAV repository module for use with the Apache WebDAV module, mod_dav. Apache mod_dav parses WebDAV and DeltaV protocol requests into operations on a repository providing persistent storage of resources and their properties. The default repository for mod_dav is provided by a separate module, mod_dav_fs, which stores resource bodies as files in the filesystem, and stores properties in a (G)DBM database.

Catacomb provides a replacement for mod_dav_fs called mod_dav_repos that stores resources and their properties in a relational database using mod_dbd from the apache project for database abstraction. The primary advantage of this approach is the searching capabilities of the database are used to implement the DASL protocol. Additionally, the database allows straightforward implementation of the versioning capabilities of the DeltaV protocol.

By shifting to relational database technology, Catacomb is a platform that contains important aspects of typical document management systems: the ability to store large numbers of documents, and search over their metadata. Furthermore, it is possible (via source code modification) to change the set of predefined properties stored in the main schema of the relational database. Properties in the main schema are faster to search.

This project is the first open source implementation of the DASL and DeltaV(linear versioning) protocols. We plan on tracking the evolution of this protocol.

Features provided by Catacomb:

• Class 1, 2 features from RFC 2518
• Storage of arbitrary client-defined dead properties
• Support for live properties defined in RFC 2518
• DASL protocol - (as defined by draft-reschke-webdav-search-00) for searching over live and dead properties using the DAV:basicsearch grammar
• Subset of DeltaV protocol from RFC 3253 (linear versioning)
  • Supports VERSION-CONTROL, CHECKIN, CHECKOUT, UNCHECKOUT, REPORT methods

Features not currently supported by Catacomb:

• Searching of resource content
• Searching version resource or version history resource
• Query Schema Discovery
• Searching of nested dead properties
• Workspace, Baselines, Activities

Release Notes

- Version 0.9.6 - 5/08/08

• Added database abstraction with mod_dbd from apache versions > 2.2.6
• Some more bugs fixed. See CHANGES file for more details.

Download

• catacomb-0.9.6.tar.gz

For older versions or a more detailed changelog please go to the Catacomb Archives

If you want to migrate your data from a previous version of catacomb running with mysql to a more recent one with another database backend, this catacomb-database-migration script may help you: catacomb_database_migration.tar.gz

Documentation

• Sunghun Kim, Kai Pan, Elias Sinderson, and E. James Whitehead, Jr., "Architecture and Data Model of a WebDAV-based Collaborative System." In Proceedings of The 2004 International Symposium on Collaborative Technologies and Systems (CTS 2004) January 18-23, 2004 San Diego, California, USA
• Building Catacomb on Cygwin
• Catacomb HOWTO
• Catacomb HOWTO for ACL support. [PDF]
• Catacomb Architecture

Roadmap

Take a look at our development Roadmap.

Participation

Catacomb is an Open Source project, and we welcome your participation. See TODO lists or take a look at our development page.

• Catacomb Subversion Server
  

      $ svn checkout http://catacomb.tigris.org/svn/catacomb/trunk/catacombsvn/trunk catacomb
  

• Development mailing list : dev@catacomb.tigris.org_nospam, To join Click Here.
• You could find the old mailing list archive here.

---

Last updated Aug 05, 2008 by Markus Litz DLR