Re: FW: LC Comments: Web Method Feature

On Tue, Jul 09, 2002 at 02:53:51PM +0100, Marc Hadley wrote:
> > Right.  But still not non-orthogonal enough to be able to derive the
> > method from the MEP. 8-)
> >
> I agree:
> 
> (i) For the request-response MEP, only choice is POST because GET can't 
> send request entity body (SOAP message).

Not exactly.  PUT can also transfer an entity body.  The issue with it
is that its meaning, not any 2616/Section-8 consideration, prevents it
from being used to transfer SOAP messages, at least when you want the
SOAP processing model to be followed.

> (ii) For the response MEP, either GET or POST is possible. The missing 
> piece of information is whether the operation is safe or not. If it is 
> safe then GET should be used, if not then POST should be used.
> 
> So, I would argue that the two pieces of information that are required 
> to decide on a suitable HTTP method are the MEP and whether the 
> operation is safe.

HEAD is safe.  So is WebDAV PROPFIND (despite its flaws).  I think
OPTIONS is safe too, in practice.  Perhaps new safe methods will be
added later.  So just knowing whether something is "safe" isn't enough
to know which method to use.

But I think I'm repeating myself, so I'll stop here.

> No, it isn't ;-). If they had different labels it might work but using 
> the same term to refer to two different but related things is just plain 
> confusing.

Ok. 8-)

MB
-- 
Mark Baker, CTO, Idokorro Mobile (formerly Planetfred)
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.               distobj@acm.org
http://www.markbaker.ca        http://www.idokorro.com

Received on Tuesday, 9 July 2002 11:31:14 UTC