Dear working group,
If an object is submitted without any
changes it will always result in an update, because
when we compare the object the "last-modified:"
value will typically not match.(unless the update is
done at sub-second speed) In other words what should
be a "no-op" now results in a "touch" operation
where only the "last-modified:" attribute is
changed.
Just an observation. This might actually
be a useful side effect. It allows maintainers of
objects to 'touch' their objects and show they are
alive and actively maintaining their data even when
nothing needs to change. I am sure some people in the
community who are going to start monitoring
"last-changed:" attributes to argue that data is out
of date would appreciate that, or even request it.
Sure, there is something to be said for this, but
the downside of this is that the version history of the object
becomes very large, which may not be desired.
As far as I know this was not explicitly specified
beforehand, so it would be good to have a clear WG consensus
call on this now.
For the moment we feel that it's probably best to
apply the planned 'fix' because the behaviour will then be
consistent with no-ops until now, but we can always revert this
change when we get a clear direction from the WG.