RE: Thoughts about path and intermediaries

Two issues that I've not heard discussion on are
   1) intermediate services that transform data,
   2) recording intermediation.

Transcoding proxies are intermediate services that
transform data; we could have intermediate services
that facility data upload e.g image format conversions.

In the A-B-C path, A data for service C and relies on
service B to couple the data into the endpoint.  Today
we can only express this by hiding C behind B: we have
no way to create an economy in B/C interactions.
Callable intermediaries that transform could change this.

Intermediates that change data add complexity.
That brings me the issue of recording intermediation.
One step to manage part of the complexities of
transformation is to have a way of recording them.
Think of "receipts" or "confirmation" numbers.
Client/server has this ability in the response to
a request.  For a path system, don't we need the
ability to add information into the forwarded data
stream? Something analogous to headers but for output:
"footers" by analogy to "headers"?

John.
______________________________________________________
John J. Barton          email:  John_Barton@hpl.hp.com
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/John_Barton/index.htm
MS 1U-17  Hewlett-Packard Labs
1501 Page Mill Road              phone: (650)-236-2888
Palo Alto CA  94304-1126         FAX:   (650)-857-5100

Received on Thursday, 15 February 2001 14:19:07 UTC