Indeed, I think we need to look closer at handling of the 6th, optional element in the LSID spec, revision.
If the XML stream returned as data needs to change, that would lead to issuing a new revision. It is not said clearly that getData should return data from the latest revision (if omitted), although I'd expect that. In other words, if the revision has changed, the data returned does not have to be the same, although it might look like that it has illegally changed if you omit the revision.
But I must say that I like receiving immutable getData. For instance, if I use an LSID to identify a taxonomic concept, I expect the description not to change without notice. Someone many add a new more elaborate revision, though, which is ok.
Regards, Hannu
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Rich wrote (in the other thread): I believe the answer to Ricardo's example is better addressed in the next discussion, concerning methods for data versioning. I think the answer to this issue (persistence of metadata) necessarily must be solved via that discussion (versioning), so maybe we should discuss the versioning issue first.