Re: APPLCORE: An architectural question

Graham Klyne said this:
> I perceive that there is an early decision that this group could make with
> very significant downstream consequences.  It concerns the handling of
> multiple overlapped requests.
> 
> (A) The approach taken by IMAP/AP is to build the concurrency into the
> basic request/response protocol, including identifying tags as part of the
> data stream.
> 
> (B) The aproach taken by HTTP-NG is to have a separate multiplexing layer
> that allows a number of virtual duplex stream communications to be
> conducted on a single underlying connection.  Thus, each concurrent
> request/response is conducted in a separate data stream.

IMHO, this decision illustrates a much earlier decision about what class
of protocols we're talking about. Over the years I've seen two classes
of protocols come out of the apps area: narrowly defined limited use
protocols used only for one thing and very widely used protocols that
have large applicability and stringent scalability requirements. IMAP, 
POP, SMTP, etc fit in the first category whereas HTTP, HTTP-NG, NFS, ONC-RPC
fit in the latter.

In any charter or documents for this group I would like to see some sort
of scoping as to which class the group would be focusing. IMHO I think
the latter class is going to use techniques that are specific to that
particular problem. I think the much more doable and useful output would
be to focus on the former. 

If this has already been discussed then I apologies for the repeat...

-MM

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Michael Mealling	|      Vote Libertarian!       | www.rwhois.net/michael
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Received on Tuesday, 9 February 1999 11:02:45 UTC