- From: Michael Mealling <michael@bailey.dscga.com>
- Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 10:43:39 -0500 (EST)
- To: jg@pa.dec.com (Jim Gettys)
- Cc: joshco@microsoft.com, jpalme@dsv.su.se, discuss@apps.ietf.org
Jim Gettys said this: > I've dealt with both binary (straight-forward marshalling onto the wire, > nothing baroque like PER) and text protocols, and have not > found a particular advantage to either in terms of debugging. To me, > use of telnet is hardly a compelling argument one way or the other. > > Putting a breakpoint on the stubs on either end in a debugger, > and dumping the data structures, has often been easier than having > to scratch my head about syntax being correct (and the generation > and parsing thereof) in a text based protocol. Not having the same > class of parsing bugs in binary implementations helps muchly on their > side of the equasion. Just a minor nit, your observation is probably correct when you are actually writing an implementation of the protocol from scratch. I think when most of us speak about 'debugging' a server by simply telnetting to the port is after its been built and we are debugging particular applications that are using that protocol. Or also in the case where we do not have debugging access to the server or client (proprietary binaries). Also, from a past sysadmin's point of view, you're never gauranteed to have the libraries needed to parse a binary protocol on any given client. Telnet is everywhere.... -MM Sorry, hard to resist when your particular religion gets tweaked... ;-) -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Mealling | Vote Libertarian! | www.rwhois.net/michael Sr. Research Engineer | www.ga.lp.org/gwinnett | ICQ#: 14198821 Network Solutions | www.lp.org | michaelm@netsol.com
Received on Wednesday, 17 February 1999 10:55:30 UTC