On 25/8/05 07:29, "Tom Goodale" <goodale@cct.lsu.edu> wrote:
On Fri, 19 Aug 2005, Andre Merzky wrote:
I am pretty sure it braks for some cases. E.g. the backend may have a moving URL, or may reuse ID's (as Unix does with pid's). However, as long as it is not mandatory, it might just help...
You're right, but it would be useful for many cases.
So I guess we should include it, because it is simple, does not seem to break anything (its not mandatory, right?), and seems to allow a number of useful use cases. As its not mandatory, we should add it to the notes section I guess.
Does anybody else on the list disagree?
I think it should be a hint for implementers, rather than required by the spec, as as far as end users are concerned it should be an opaque string.
The benefit of exposing the format of the string is that users can use the back end system identifier directly with the back end system commands and APIs if they so choose. -- Chris