Here we go... ;)

 Pádraic Brady

http://blog.astrumfutura.com
http://www.survivethedeepend.com
OpenID Europe Foundation Irish Representative





________________________________
From: Matthew Terenzio <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wed, October 21, 2009 11:28:32 PM
Subject: [pubsubhubbub] Re: Review of Core 0.2 draft - style issues


What is an update?

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 6:19 PM, Bob Wyman <[email protected]> wrote:
> Please.... Please.... Don't anyone restart the "What is an update?"
> discussion... Too many lives have been wasted on that one already.
>
> bob wyman
>
> On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 6:11 PM, Tim Bray <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> >> 3. High-level Protocol Flow, last bullet point. "The hub caches
>> >> minimal metadata..." I read this a few times and it seems to be
>> >> describing one particular implementation strategy.  If so, why not say
>> >> so?  The current language makes it look like this is maybe a normative
>> >> part of what you have to do to implement PuSH, which I'm pretty sure
>> >> it isn't.
>> >
>> > I think this is intended to be normative. A stateless hub can't
>> > function properly (doing feed diffs). The language here was chosen
>> > specifically to imply stateful handling of content without dictating
>> > the specific implementation.
>>
>> In fact, what you're specifying is that the hub MUST be able to detect
>> a delta so it can inform subscribers.  Normative text should specify
>> policy not mechanism.
>>
>> This touches on a nasty subject that you probably don't want to go
>> near.  If I were implementing, I think it might be perfectly OK to
>> stash just atom:feed/atom:updated and //atom:entry/atom:updated.
>>
>> I am quite sure there are others who would disagree & insist on
>> stashing enough to detect differences in the white space between
>> attribute values.  Don't laugh, I speak from bitter experience.  If
>> there's one thing we learned in the process of building 4287, it is
>> hopeless to expect consensus on what constitutes an "update".  I have
>> a thousand emails to show you if you disagree.
>>
>> So I think it's probably inappropriate to specify "minimal" metadata.
>> Just say "The hub stores sufficient state information about each topic
>> to detect changes so that it can notify subscribers."  -T
>
>

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