[rest-practices] Atom as a generic container? [was Re: Media types]

[Bill Burke]

Bob McWhirter wrote:
>> You're absolutely correct that this does go against the letter of the 
>> spec, which requires that a non-empty return would be exactly the same 
>> as for a normal GET.
>>
>> Though I'd argue that the delta semantics are still kinda within the 
>> "spirit of the spec" ;)
> 
> I dunno if Squid or other http proxies and caches would agree with that 
> though. We gotta live within existing deployed http infrastructure. 
> 

That's an even better reason why this isn't a good idea.  You'd never be 
able to effectively insert a cache if you had special semantics tied to 
if-modified-since.

-- 
Bill Burke
JBoss, a division of Red Hat
http://bill.burkecentral.com