WebDAV
WebDAV, or Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning, is a series of tools developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) which make it possible to not only download data from the internet, but also to manipulate data and save data up to whatever services WebDAV is providing. WebDAV and its developers are essentially responsible for dealing with the operational details of metadata, the management of name spaces, web-based file locking, and historical archiving of previous versions of documents in order to recall them for later uses.
For the Rochester Institute of Technology, WebDAV and its utilities are responsible for a large number of services. The most outwardly visible of these is related to the new Microsoft Exchange environment. As Microsoft Exchange and its email services are beginning to be utilized to a greater extent, users are beginning to see the benefits of the new email system whose web interface (Outlook Web Access) is powered by WebDAV and its utilities. In addition to OWA, WebDAV is also reponsible for the user/system interoperability of key features within Microsoft Entourage for the Macintosh including its calendaring functionality.