[As my first attempt got flagged as spam, I'm resending this] Jem queried our definition of data consistency, which is currently: "A policy that specifies or describes how up-to-date an instance of data is in one service of a distributed system, with respect to one or more instances of that data elsewhere in the system." Jem said (in e-mail): "My thought was that data consistency would be a state of the data - it's consistent w.r.t. some other set of data or it isn't; the policy would be the rules that determine whether it is, and what the requirements are." I've had a look through our document and I agree. We refer to data consistency policies but also to data consistency requirements, mechanisms and strategies. So, how about this as a revised definntion: "A measure of how up-to-date an instance of data is in one service of a distributed system, with respect to one or more instances of that data elsewhere in the system." Best wishes, Dave Berry Deputy Director, Research & E-infrastructure Development National e-Science Centre 15 South College Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AA +44 131 651 4039 www.nesc.ac.uk