Re: PROPOSAL: Weak Validator definition [i101]

Henrik Nordstrom wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-03-14 at 21:35 +0100, Werner Baumann wrote:
>> The spec is self-contradictory and the parts that state "semantic 
>> equivalence" should be removed.
> 
> Agreed. All definitons of weak should be based on "SHOULD change when
> the entity changes in a semantically significant way".
> 
> Regards
> Henrik
> 

Using SHOULD only would turn a strong self-contradiction into a weak 
self-contradiction.
I still suggest to remove "semantic" from all validator related stuff 
and instead use wording as proposed by Mark Nottingham: "good enough,
from the server's point of view".

I originally raised this issue, because I believed in weak etags 
guaranteeing something like "semantic equivalence" and I was 
disappointed when it turned out to be an illusion. My experience is 
restricted to Apache and IIS. Weak etags created by this two servers are 
not related to semantics in any way. They are weak only because of the 
limited resolution of Last-Modified-Date.

Are there any implementations of weak validators, that refer to semantic 
equivalence?

Werner

Received on Saturday, 15 March 2008 08:56:15 UTC