RE: 'last call' comment on draft-ietf-webdav-protocol-07.txt-- resource:URL 1:1?

> At the working group meeting, there seemed to be some disagreement
> about this point; Jim seemed to think (emphatically) that it was
> required that the mapping between 'resource' and 'URL' was 1-1,
> but others seemed to assert that it might be 1-many.

I don't believe the rest of this discussion can be addressed until this
point is cleared up.  The reason I hold that the mapping between resource
and URL is 1-to-1 is that I believe there is no way for an HTTP client to
tell the difference between the following cases:

Assume: URL A and URL B both retrieve entity E on an HTTP GET:

A) Both A and B are identifiers for the same resource.

B) Both A and B are identifiers for different resources which happen to
return the same entity.

Since it is impossible for a client to tell the difference between these two
cases, it makes sense to me that there is a 1-to-1 correspondence between
URI and resource.  However, I can certainly see that an underlying
repository might map the same "chunk of persistent state" to one or more
URI/resource pairs.  So, while I hold that there is a 1-to-1 correspondence
between URI and resource, I also accept that there can be a many-to-one
correspondence between URI/resource pairs and "chunks of persistent state".

- Jim