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Re: weak etags vs PATCH, was: Fwd: New Version Notification - draft-dusseault-http-patch-15.txt

From: Roy T. Fielding <fielding@gbiv.com>
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:05:57 -0700
Cc: "'Julian Reschke'" <julian.reschke@gmx.de>, "'Lisa Dusseault'" <lisa.dusseault@gmail.com>, "'Mark Nottingham'" <mnot@mnot.net>, "'HTTP Working Group'" <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>
Message-Id: <CF62A0CD-94C7-4DAA-B2BC-AB32A75693A1@gbiv.com>
To: Brian Smith <brian@briansmith.org> 
On Oct 19, 2009, at 12:43 PM, Brian Smith wrote:

> Julian Reschke wrote:
>> So my proposal would be to stay silent on this, and let the base spec
>> define it.
>
> I agree, but IMO, there should *never* be a fallback to Last-Modified
> because Last-Modified only has 1-second resolution. If the server  
> supports
> PATCH then it can definitely provide an ETag.

1-second resolution is as good as nanosecond resolution as soon
as that second is history, and in practice both are useless for
tagging dynamic content that is generated during a response.

Using last-modified as a fallback is always better than not
using any conditional at all.

....Roy
Received on Tuesday, 20 October 2009 00:06:26 GMT

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