Re: Standardizing Firefox's Implementation of Link Fingerprints

On Jul 10, 2007, at 2:49 PM, Edward Lee wrote:
> On 7/2/07, Roy T. Fielding <fielding@gbiv.com> wrote:
>> Adding metadata to a URI that is orthogonal to its identifying  
>> purpose
>> duplicates the space of references and splits the power of the  
>> resulting
>> resources.
>
> Link Fingerprints are used to identify a particular version of a
> resource; if the Link Fingerprint does not match up, it's as if the
> resource was not found. In that sense, it strengthens the URI's
> ability to identify resources.

No, it does not.  A "resource" is not what is sent to the client in
response to a retrieval request.  Fragments are an extra level of
indirection that refers to a different resource defined by the
representation returned by the resource.  The only component in
the request chain that is even aware of the fragment is the UA.

This whole feature is completely unnecessary.  If you want the
resource to be named as a static representation, then use the hash
in its real identifier -- the URI path.  That way, both the server
and the client can verify that the representation fits the hash
prior to its delivery and the origin server can set the appropriate
metadata for cache-control, content-md5, etc.

....Roy

Received on Tuesday, 10 July 2007 22:13:48 UTC