Re: PERSIST: propose to make default

On Thu, 18 Apr 1996, Dave Kristol wrote:

> IF YOU DISAGREE, please address your objections to the http-wg mailing
> list as quickly as possible.  I review the proposal below.

I disagree ... this is being proposed with far to little time to reflect
on inplications such as Roy Fielding raises with respect to clean and
unclean close.

Having just recently spent days figuring out connection reset messages
from Netscape which turned out to be our server ignoring the 
non-protocol extra CR-LF following POST content. I think this proposal
has significant potential for increasing the probability that unclean
close will become the norm.  At best this will require significantly
more user friendly error handling.

It seems to me that the fundamental problem here will be a HTTP/1.1
client initiating a persistent connection with what turns out to be a
HTTP/1.0 server w/o knowing the server is able to handle the additional
data. If I recall correctly some of the issues raised earlier in
the two phase PUT discussions, an HTTP/1.0 server could close after
sending a brief response with the possiblity that the close would
result in a reset which could leave the client quite confused.

Isn't this a relatively minor change which could be included with
HTTP/1.2? At that point there will be more general experience
deploying the more conservative approach as well as more experience
writing the code.

So I would recommend against the change at this time but having said
my piece, I can accept the proposal as currently stated.

Dave Morris

Received on Thursday, 18 April 1996 23:10:53 UTC