Re: Client Option for Strong References

Marcus Jager wrote:

> Type A references cannot be "dangling" since they reference a specific
> location irrespective of the existence of a resource there.

I don't think this is a useful viewpoint.  They are dangling in a very real
sense: if you do a GET on them, you get an error.  That error is going to have
to be 404 (unless we define a new one and confuse all the existing clients),
which means that, as far as a client is concerned, the reference doesn't
exist--the client doesn't know that the 404 applies to the target.  If the
client then comes along and does a PUT on this location that it believes to be
empty, the server will perform the PUT at the target location.  I believe that
this kind of confusion is going to be a very bad thing.

--
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|John (Francis) Stracke    |My opinions are my own.|S/MIME supported |
|Software Retrophrenologist|=========================================|
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|francis@netscape.com      |  scratched.                             |
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Received on Thursday, 8 October 1998 13:05:38 UTC