Re: Data Integrity

Shel Kaplan writes: 
> I am not convinced anything extra really needs to be added.
> The only thing that seems open to question is what a cache (should/must/may)
> do with the response to a request with cache-control: no-cache (or reload).
> My assumption was that  the most reasonable thing for the cache to do
> would be to store the most recently received version of any document
> it receives, especially since one of the reasons for a forced reload
> would be to fix garbled data.  Maybe words to this effect belong in
> the spec somewhere.


Thanks for your explanation.  If we believe that proxies should reload
pages as they pass by (even if they have a copy they think is "good"),
then I suspect we should use cache-control: reload, rather than
cache-control: no-cache.  That language makes it clear enough that the
proxy will and should update its copy.  With cache-control: no cache,
an implementor might assume that the directive was to be used when the
user agent did not want integrity checks to be applied or did not want
the results of the request stored in that cache (some info might not be
appropriate for a public cache, for example).

				Ted Hardie
				NASA Science Internet

Received on Thursday, 15 February 1996 14:43:05 UTC