Re: Idempotent

If I understand correctly, there are two different issues with "idempotence":
(a) what it really is
(b) when it should be applied.

I am not sure that the statement of Koen,

%  2) in the mathematical meaning, *all* side effects, not just `bad'
%    side effects, must be absent the second time.

applies to a mathematical model of idempotence - but I fail to see any
math model with side effects, too :-) anyway, this is not an issue with
respect to the draft.

As for (a), could we say that there is an optional property
(named idempotence, hysteresis or whatever you want) such that any two 
consecutive request to the server should return an identical result
*as far as client is concerned*? I could be wrong, but my idea is that 
we don't care if the server updates a counter or performs whatever it 
wants, as long as the client cannot notice it.

.mau.

Received on Thursday, 31 August 1995 01:34:53 UTC