Re: PROPOSAL: Weak Validator definition [i101]

Henrik Nordstrom wrote:
> Quite likely there is many examples out there in the wild along the
> lines of the pageviews counter example found in the RFC, but semantic
> equivalence fits within "good enough from the servers point of view".

I am not sure whether this is meant by you the way I understand it: Do 
you mean "good enough from the servers point of view" is o.k., because 
it includes your understanding of semantic equivalence? Or is it meant 
the other way round?
To be pedantic about pageview counters (what I ain't): a change in the 
pageview count is a semantic change. But I agree, it would be a good 
example for weak etags, because it is not important. I, personally, 
would accept strong etags in this case (although this violates the spec).

> But probably not as many as there should be as most people don't
> understand the cache model of HTTP until it's too late to make their web
> application fit..

To be honest: I would not know, how to get this working with Apache. 
Apache's default etag-handling can not deal with this kind of weak 
etags. You would have to override apache's etag-handling and do it all 
by your own. Quite a lot of effort for a toy like pageview counters.

Werner

Received on Saturday, 15 March 2008 21:41:43 UTC