HTTP-caching: Getting the ball rolling

The list membership seems to have mostly stabilized, and I've almost
finished the paper that I wanted to finish this week, so it's time
get things moving.

First, some ground rules:

(1) Send mail to http-caching@pa.dec.com to reach the entire group.
Try to not to grow long lists of Cc: addresses unless you believe
that someone isn't actually a member of the mailing list.

(2) Send mail to http-caching-request@pa.dec.com for list membership
stuff, or to request a copy of the archive.  Sorry, due to our
firewall setup, I can't make this into a Web page.

(3) PLEASE try to keep to one topic per message (unless you are
discussing the relationship between topics), and please try to
keep the Subject: line connected to the topic.

(4) Please be polite.

Next steps:

I would like to proceed in this order:

(1) Agree on some goals for the subgroup.  Then agree on a list
of "issues" (that is, situations where caching seems to be a problem)
to be addressed (which may grow as time passes).

(2) Try to come up with a consensus on a basic caching model;
during this stage, I do NOT want to have arguments about syntax
and we should not go depth-first into arcane discussions about
details.  I fully expect that we will not reach 100% agreement
at this stage, but we should at least end up with a small number
of fully defined caching models as alternatives.

(3) Explore specific issues in the context of the model or models,
to see if we have solutions or can adjust the models to solve
the issues.

(4) Finally, fix the syntax and create a specification.

In my next message, I'll provide my first-draft version of
the list of goals.  Please feel free to comment on these,
but let's discuss the goals before we start fights about
the design and specification!

-Jeff

Received on Wednesday, 20 December 1995 19:06:42 UTC