> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Cooper [mailto:ian@mirror-image.com]
> Sent: Friday, September 10, 1999 5:50 AM
> To: Joe Touch
> Cc: wrec@cs.utk.edu
> Subject: Re: Taxonomy Term closure needed
>
>
> On Thu, 9 Sep 1999 17:40:49 -0700 (PDT), Joe Touch wrote:
>
> >> First Derivative Terms: (Build upon base terms)
> >> Cache
> >> A derived definition for RFC2616. Editors View - Open Disuccsion
> >> Editor-Notes: The most controversial term in the taxonomy.
> Is it dervived
> >> from replication or is it a base term? 3 variants proposed need
> >> rationalization. There has been so many comments on each of
> the variant
> >> definitions, we would like the individuals to supply thier
> current concise
> >> definitions for dicussion.
> >> Current taxonomy definition
> >> "A program's local store of response messages and the
> >> subsystem that controls its message storage, retrieval, and
> >> deletion. A cache stores cacheable responses in order to
> >> reduce the response time, server load and network
> >> bandwidth consumption on future, equivalent requests. Any
> >> client or server may include a cache, though a cache
> >> cannot be used by a server while it is acting as a tunnel."
I'm afraid the definition "response messages" is somewhat misleading.
We are interested not in messages but in data entities (or resources)
carried in these messages. Here you get this discussion if we should
store error replies. Well, we should not store some success replies
too, like 200 reply to POST or PUT.
In fact cache operates with data entities, and
the protocol message is not replayed but generated.
Reply code in this message reflects resut of the request
processing in cache, not copy of server reply code. Consider
partial GET or conditional GET. Given valid entity (resource)
exists in the cache valid response may be given to such requests,
and this response does not reproduce some message from
server - such message may have never existed, entity may
have arrived in a different message.
I suggest to change terminology to "resources" or "data entities"
to better reflect this reality.
- Oskar
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