Patent ID: 7392348

Claim:
A method for validating remotely cached dynamic content web pages, comprising: analyzing a plurality of parts of a response to a client request to identify a plurality of attributes thereof, wherein the attributes identify a set of dependencies of the content on sources of dynamic content; determining a cacheability of the response, the sources of dynamic content in the response and the set of dependencies on the sources; generating an entity tag based on the cacheability, the sources and the set of dependencies, wherein the entity tag identifies the sources and includes cacheability flags and time values associated with the set of dependencies; returning and caching the response and the entity tag on the client; receiving a subsequent request from the client with the entity tag; and analyzing the entity tag by comparing time values within the entity tag associated with the set of dependencies to corresponding time values for the sources to determine if the cached response is valid, wherein the comparison is made without evaluating or rebuilding the response.