At 10:39 PM 4/17/00 -0400, Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
>The reason I ask is that your master's thesis appears to assume that files
>are sequenced objects (I may have failed to understand something here). This
>creates a problem in distribution, because the sequence numbering cannot be
>resolved locally. I have therefore adopted a design in which every object
>version is conceptually distinct, and the delta management is an artifact of
>the store implementation. The API clearly needs to provide enough hints that
>the server can do something vaguely intelligent about creating deltas, but
>must not introduce a serialization requirement. I can see no inherent reason
>why the "base" file of any given delta cannot be arbitrarily chosen. The
>most efficient delta is likely to come from a previous version of the same
>file, but there is no law of nature that says this will always be true.
When you make a change whose effect is to back out the last change, then the n-2 generation is the best to delta against. :-)