Re: Proposal (I-D) for extending HTTP to support out-of-order responses

• From: Roy T. Fielding <fielding@ebuilt.com>
• Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 13:58:35 -0700
• To: Patrick McManus <mcmanus@appliedtheory.com>
• Cc: Jeffrey Mogul <mogul@pa.dec.com>, http-wg@hplb.hpl.hp.com
• Message-ID: <20010412135835.A1120@waka.ebuilt.net>

> 2 thoughts, the first is just a throw-away:
> 
> 1 - HTTP is stateless. indeed 2616 in its intro describes itself this
>     way.. this is a pretty fundamental change, even as an optional
>     extension.. so the intro should probably discuss it. that's all.

HTTP is stateless in the sense that all of the information needed to
interpret and handle a request is present in that request and not based
on a prior request's leftover state.  A RID doesn't change that in
principle, though it would certainly complicate the implementation
to handle out-of-order responses.  On the server-side, the ability
to have out-of-order responses makes it easier to partition pipelined
requests out to multiple server instances, which is one of the main
reasons why HTTP is stateless.

....Roy

Received on Thursday, 12 April 2001 14:17:28 UTC