Re: Why MD5 Headers are Imperative

On 18/8/06 9:42 AM, "Eric J. Bowman" 
<eric-MkmoNbc1SAncr/OS1auqaA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> "Once  a  resource  has  been  created  and  its  URI  is  known,  that  URI
> can be  used  to  retrieve,  update,  and  delete  the  resource. "
> 
> This asserts that the edit representation MUST be identical to the _resource_

I don't read that sentence as asserting that. I know that retrievals of a
resource are via representations since resources are a conceptual thing,
never bits on a wire. I also know that however that representation may
appear, it may well have absolutely zero correlation as to how it is stored
at the other end (whether in XML, or a comma-delimited file, or some binary
structure in memory, or fractured shards scattered across several SQL
tables, or arrangements of knots in a piece of string).

The protocol concerns itself with the communication between server and
client, it doesn't (shouldn't) have anything to say about what the server
does behind the scenes.



e.