Re: ETags, next call, was: Notes on call from today ...

Cullen Jennings wrote:
> 
> I have heard that this is wanted for applications other than a  file system.
> Right now I was sort of looking for examples of applications that did not
> want to use this.  

I think in this case the question needs to be rephrased: what would 
these clients prefer?

1) keeping the spec as is, meaning that there aren't any guarantees 
about this behaviour

2) changing the spec to mandate this, leading

2a) to some servers claiming to support this, but failing to do so 
(non-compliant implementations), or

2b) to some servers stopping to support WebDAV altogether.

I'd also like to point out again that there is a class of resources that 
simply can't support strong ETags (for instance, WebDAV interfaces to 
XML-Infoset-based databases). Thinking of this, even the SHOULD that we 
have somewhere else in the spec is a very bad decision, and everybody 
should understand that this makes it impossible to maintain WebDAV 
interfaces to certain classes of resources (this is likely to be raised 
during IETF last call, so we better make sure the problem is understood).

Best regards, Julian

Received on Saturday, 26 November 2005 09:06:09 UTC