WebDAV has been around a lot longer and does many of the same things as object storage. It also has support for random access read/writes where object storage requires you to download, edit, and re-upload the whole file. Seems like a no-brainer if you wanted to offer cloud storage to customers.

I thought maybe supporting large uploads was the draw, but WebDAV can support chunking, so you don’t need to allocate extra server resources to accommodate large files.

I use both daily, and WebDAV just seems like it does everything better: object storage feels like throwing files in a junk drawer and WebDAV more like an organized filing cabinet.

Aside from Nextcloud and a few FOSS applications, the only big thing I recall that adopted WebDAV was Frontpage back in the day.

So, what am I missing? What makes object storage so compelling that it became ubiquitous while WebDAV is practically a legacy spec?

  • @blakemiller
    1•9 months ago

    Couldn’t say for sure but WebDAV probably would be clunky if fronted by a distributed database. The beauty of S3 is you add more servers, add more disks, and bam you’ve got more S3. That happens most easily when the metadata system sitting in the front can expand easily. I don’t know how easy that would be to plumb up with WebDAV. Whether or not one was better here, S3 ultimately won because it’s a primitive API that was essentially impossible to fuck up.