Hi, I think this is more of a dev question given that it needs some knowledge of the deterministic rev algorithm ...
I was just wondering if CouchDB could use the deterministic rev stuff to avoid writing changes to the database if nothing has actually changed in the doc that is PUT back (or bulk updated, of course). The most obvious use case is that it's horrifyingly common for users to click an HTML form's submit button, instead of using the back button, when they haven't changed anything. I suspect most applications do not check if the user made any changes and therefore end up sending exactly the same data back as an update ... unnecessarily creating a new document rev, growing the database, invalidating views, and triggering _changes updates. CouchDB obviously has to calculate the hash for the new rev anyway, so perhaps it could compare the new value to the current value, skip it if it's unchanged and return the current _rev in the response. Is that feasible? If so, I'll create a ticket for it. - Matt
