Can we mandate the vtag has the equivalent properties of a strong etag in HTTP? 
i.e. if an alto service is provided by multiple servers then those servers must 
ensure that vtags are consistent across servers/versions?

If not we could have the equivalent of weak and strong vtags and in the case of 
weak the client would expect the same server (IP & port) to return consistent 
vtags but if it connected to another server it would have to re-retrieve the 
entire cost map if it wanted to compare it to a filtered cost map from the same 
(2nd) server. 

(BTW I'm not sure you can compare a filtered costmap against a full cost map if 
the costs are ordinal)

Ben

On 15 May 2013, at 17:45, Richard Alimi <[email protected]> wrote:

> One question that Wendy brought up was: "if one resource directory can refer 
> to a different resource directory which may live at a different server or 
> administrative domain, when is it safe for an ALTO Client to conclude that a 
> cost metric means the same thing?" A particular example here is the full cost 
> map and filtered cost map.  If the client fetched the full cost map with the 
> 'routingcost' cost metric, and then later wanted to use a more refined query, 
> then presumably the client should be able to assume that the values in the 
> filtered cost map (also with the 'routingcost' cost metric) mean the same 
> thing.
> 
> A similar thing holds for version tags.  If the client finds a cost map with 
> version tag '1234', under what conditions should it declare that it matches 
> the version tag for a particular network map?  Similar to the cost map 
> example above, both may come from a different server or administrative domain.
> 
> To resolve this ambiguity, we are proposing to add the following to Section 
> 8.3.1:
> 
> "The meanings of identifiers used in resources discovered via an entry point 
> to an ALTO Server (i.e., by the ALTO Discovery Protocol) SHOULD be consistent 
> with each other. In particular, a particular values for a different cost maps 
> of the same cost metric should be comparable, and the version tag for a cost 
> map should be comparable to the version tag for the network map on which it 
> was based, even if the two maps are provided by a different server."
> 
> I hope the intent here is clear.  Admittedly, this is probably not a crisp 
> enough statement to put in the draft yet, but suggestions on improving it 
> would be appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> Rich
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