On Sun, May 22, 2005 at 05:14:54PM -0700, Bill Taroli wrote:
I suppose the ultimate answer to this question will boil down to "What
is this status intended to communicate to a receiver, and is the
condition consistent with that intent?" Note that I don't ask the
question "what will the receiver do with this?" but rather "what is the
spec communicating?"
Indeed. And as such, no single result (none/neutral/softfail) is
going to provide correct results for the case where the included
record is suddenly gone or broken.
PermError used to suggest a 5xx error being returned.
I definitely understand the rationale for this, but as a receiving it's
nice to be able to make the decision myself. If I see conditions
resulting in PermError that don't fit my image of 5xx, then I may not
5xx in cases where it might be proper.
Sure. Your box, your rules. Also, the spec says SHOULD, not MUST.
This means in general one should return 5xx but there may be reasons
not to do so.
Alex