David Moss wrote:
> Would interfacing with the repository via WebDAV be a better solution?

No, I don't think so. WebDAV is just another transport, but will not effect how 
documents are indexed when you add one to a workspace.

There is a jira issue open about putting fulltext indexing into a background 
thread: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/JCR-390

regards
  marcel