- From: Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>
- Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 13:14:13 -0800
- To: Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net>
- Cc: "Williams, Stuart" <skw@hplb.hpl.hp.com>, xml-dist-app@w3.org, Martin Gudgin <marting@develop.com>, Paul Prescod <paulp@activestate.com>
On Wed, Feb 20, 2002 at 10:16:59AM -0800, Paul Prescod wrote: > > I both believe and pray that this will not happen. Anyhow, this brief > dialog is enough to get people thinking about it but I will not believe > that it will really happy until I hear HTTP wonks like Roy Fielding, Jim > Whitehead and Mark Baker sign off. I don't believe they will. > > Nevertheless, it is irrelevant unless the SOAP HTTP binding allows > people sending messages to choose their HTTP method which I do not > believe it does today. > > http://www.prescod.net/http/query_alternatives.html From that document (er, resource): There are three partial solutions to these problem. The first is merely to use a POST. A POST result may state that the entity is cacheable. So if cacheing is the main worry then the problem is already solved although this is obviously somewhat of an abuse of POST because it violates the "only-GET axiom." Nevertheless, how is it better to invent a new method that always violates the axiom rather than re-using an existing method that sometimes violates it. There's a slight misconception that I see recurring here; it's either widespread, or just on my part. My understanding is that 2616, by 'cacheable POST', means that if a POST's response carries cache directives, it may be replayed in response to GETs on the same resource. However, it MAY NOT be replayed in response to subsequent POSTs; they must be forwarded to the origin. If this is true, using POST isn't a solution, because the cache cannot satisfy subsequent queries; they can only resubmit the POST. This, I think, is the motivation for a separate QUERY method, whose responses can be replayed. All of this said, I agree with your conclusions about QUERY; it's more trouble than it's worth (see [1]). Cheers, [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2002Jan/0236.html -- Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/
Received on Wednesday, 20 February 2002 16:14:15 UTC