Calendaring protocols

CalDAV protocol

CalDAV or Calendaring Extension to WebDave is a standard allowing a client to access scheduling information on a remote server. CalDAV works by modeling events, which may be meetings or appointments or other engagements, as HTTP resources. Events are encoded in standard iCalendar format and organized into WebDAV collections to allow browsing and synchronization. A CalDAV server supports a number of operations such as generating free-busy time reports and expanding recurring events. With this functionality, a user may synchronize his or her own calendar to a CalDAV server, and share it among multiple devices or with other users. The CalDAV protocol also supports other non-personal calendars, such as calendars for sites or organizations.

WebDAV protocol

Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning, or WebDAV, is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) which allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers. The group of developers responsible for these extensions was also known by the same name and was a working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force. The protocol facilitates "Intercreativity", making the Web a readable and writable medium. The protocol provides functionality to create, change and move documents on a remote server (typically a web server or "web share"). This is useful for, among other things, authoring the documents hosted on a web server, but can also be used for general web-based file storage that can be accessed from anywhere. Important features in the WebDAV protocol include locking (overwrite prevention), properties (creation, removal, and querying of information about author, modified date, etc.), namespace management (ability to copy and move Web pages within a server's namespace) and collections (creation, removal, and listing of resources). Most modern operating systems provide built-in support for WebDAV. With the right client and a fast network, it can be almost as easy to use files on a WebDAV server as those stored in local directories.