There are no famous dead

Recent emails from Y Goland (on WebDAV) and A Babich have helped me to see
that the concept of 'famous' dead is bogus.  All the dead are obscure.  

Alan puts it very well:

> ALL dead properties are strings as far as the server is concerned. 

>... A sequence
>of characters that just happens to match the syntax for
>a hex integer or a floating point literal or a zip code
>or a street address or an XML document might be intended to
>be a literal string by the client -- the server can't know,
>and is not allowed to guess. 

This removes the last reason for wanting to include a datatype in the query
clause for a dead property.  All dead properties are strings, so there's no
need for a datatype there.  For all live properties, the server already
knows, so there's no need for a datatype there, either.

Can we now reach concensus on this list that datatype is not needed in
queries?

Received on Wednesday, 22 July 1998 17:02:50 UTC