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Models: preservation of user information



Title: Models: preservation of user information

Section 6.1 includes this paragraph:

  Where such requirements have not be explicitly stated, servers SHOULD
  preserve the value of user information but MAY return the value in a
  different form.  And where a server is unable (or unwilling) to
  preserve the value of user information, the server SHALL ensure that
  an equivalent value (per Section 2.3) is returned.

This would allow the server to return values that are not identical to the original values added by an application. Partly because sometimes, equality rules only determine equivalency instead of exact equality.

I think this could lead to problems. For instance, name information for attributes with a caseIgnoreMatch equality matching rule might be returned in the wrong case which would actually be a loss of information for the application.

I would prefer mandating servers to return the exact value that was originally added (when there are no explicit constraints in the schema definition for that item). Essentially this would be changing the above paragraph to:

  Where such requirements have not been explicitly stated, servers MUST
  preserve the value of user information (return the same values that
  were originally added).

Chris.