[GLLUG] WebDAV functionality or other CMS-type system

[Jason Green]

My organization is currently looking for and evaluating Intranet 
solutions, which will need to fit the following criteria:

- Cheap per-user licensing or preferably free (GPL, etc.)
- Integrate with Active Directory security (LDAP) as well as an 
additional security model which we will maintain (employees who only 
need to look up information, not make changes or have email or anything 
- using payroll ID and password combination or some such system)
  - Users who enter their AD login will have access to more than the 
in-house security logins.
- Standard portal functions that are EASY to maintain for non-techies 
(basic organization news, links to other sites, etc.)
- Content Management (the biggie):
  - Versioning built-in
  - Need to be able to map a Windows drive (and preferably other OS's, 
too), so the most recent version of every document is accessible via 
X:\Documents\Customer\ ...., etc.
  - Need a Web interface to also connect to the same data.  I envision 
this interface being used to enter the Metadata, look at old versions of 
documents...
- Customizable for a small number of IT staff - we should be able to 
code reports using basic SQL queries against a variety of back-end data 
sources to generate reports.  Charts and graphs would make it an easier 
sell, too.

The systems I've already tested (VERY basic installs) are Zope/Plone and 
eZpublish.  Both include WebDAV functionality "out of the box", but 
eZpublish is the only one so far that is supposed to do the versioning 
automatically with WebDAV.  Plone seems to just use it as a direct link 
to the source data.  icoya has a product that claims to have this 
functionality, but I haven't tested it yet.  eZpublish is in the middle 
of a documentation revamping process, so their docs are hard to 
navigate.  Microsoft Sharepoint Server claims to be able to do this as 
well (though I'm not sure about the network drive-mapping), but they do 
it all through ActiveX plugins (avoid!), and they have priced themselves 
out of the market once you add Sharepoint CALs, File Access CALs, and 
whatever other CALs they decide to toss in the mix.

Window's "Web Folders" is a joke.  It only works for Office2000+ 
documents or other WebDAV-enabled programs that register themselves with 
Web Folders - you can't double-click on a file in a Web Folder and have 
it open automatically unless that extension is registered.  But, Novell 
provides a free (as in beer) Windows utility called NetDrive that can be 
used to map network drives to WebDAV folders which does all of the 
checkout-checkin functions automatically for you.

I've seen some complaints of WebDAV performance, but it shouldn't be a 
big deal in a LAN or T1 WAN environment for most things, and if it's too 
slow, the user should just as easily be able to use the web interface 
and access the same data.  My questions are:
- Am I on the right track with looking at WebDAV for this, or is there a 
better solution I'm not thinking about?
- Has anyone attempted something of this nature?  What hurdles did you 
have to jump through to get it working, and what did you use?
- Any major glaring errors in the logic of what I'm trying to do here?

Thanks in advance!