Re: Comments on the "new" 2518

John Barone wrote:
> You state that the SHOULD language surrounding the "best-effort" 
> behavior of MOVE allows us to implement the operation as 
> "all-or-nothing" and still be compliant with the spec.; fair enough.  
> However, I'd think that the SHOULD language in a spec. should lean in 
> the direction of the desired/expected behavior.   From Xythos' 
> perspective, "best-effort" is not the desired behavior, but then again, 
> we're just one voice.  If the belief is that "best-effort" is the 
> consensus for the desired behavior when MOVEing a collection, then so be 
> it.  However, if in future revisions the language changes to a MUST, 
> then Xythos would have to argue vigorously against such a change.
> ...


Hi,

I'd like to emphasize that - as far as I can tell - nobody is suggesting 
any change like that. The RFC2518 language IMHO accurately reflects the 
fact that an implementation of MOVE varies a lot based on the underlying 
technology, and that there simply *are* cases where it can't be done 
atomically.

Require it to be atomically, and those implementations that can't do it 
will either ignore the requirement, or stop supporting MOVE. I don't 
think this is what anybody wants.


Best regards, Julian