Re: FW: draft findings on Unsafe Methods (whenToUseGet-7)

David Orchard wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> My belief is that the web has been based upon a shared information space,
> primarily through use of GET/POST methods.  However, as we move towards more
> machine to machine oriented communications, with arbitrary payloads of XML,
> and it's focus on update/service oriented architectures, the need for a
> public contract for safe actions is dramatically reduced.  ...

I disagree with your statement of the issue. It isn't about a public
contract for safe operations, it is about addressability. Given:

 1 every bit of information on the Web should have a URI address

 2 given an address, a client must be able to derference it to get a
representation of the information item.

This implies to me that every "web protocol" that exposes information
needs 

 a) an addressing mechanism and 

 b) a clear statement of how to dereference addresses to retrieve
information. 

If you invented a soap:// addressing mechanism, then the need for
SOAP-on-GET would be greatly reduced. But until SOAP has a) and b), I
don't see how it can be any more a "Web protocol" than DHCP or POP is.

 Paul Prescod