[gunderson]

not really, the system would only need to keep track of the last updated time of each record and when aggregating them, set the proper etag.

[paul]

Right, that means that you are doing your own cache invalidation (by changing the etag or last modified time), not relying on some magic proxy which watches for PUT and DELETE. That also means that you can use normal HTTP and ignore this REST nonsense.

[gunderson]

Fair enough, but the thing I like about REST is the consistent API and (ideally) proper handle of request types via mime type information in the header.