Locking on the server prevents you from overwriting each other s changes. Web Folders use either the IETF standard WebDAV protocol or the Microsoft FrontPage protocol to send Web Folder requests across the network to a remote server. When a Web Folder first contacts a Web server, it goes through a discovery process to select which protocol to use. When you load a file from a Web Folder using Office 2000 against a WebDAV server, Office will send out the following protocol requests. Web Folders uses HTTP caching, so if the contents haven t changed on the remote server since the last time the document was requested, Web Folders will use the cached copy.
Office makes a local, temporary copy of the downloaded resource, and then allows editing to begin.
Automatic saves go to the local copy, but hitting the save button causes the document to be saved back to the Web server, using the PUT method. Office 2000 refreshes its locks every two minutes by sending a LOCK request. While this short-duration lock strategy ensures that resources won t be tied up if the locking application dies, it does prevent disconnected editing, and adds to server load. If the resource is already locked when the first lock request is made, Word and Excel will give the option to open a document as read-only, and receive a notification when the document is unlocked. Since WebDAV doesn t provide an asynchronous notification mechanism, Office checks the lock status by polling the resource with LOCK requests.