Re: cookie draft available

M. Hedlund writes:
 > 
 > On Sun, 21 Apr 1996, Simon Spero wrote:
 > > Disk space is about 1,000 times cheaper than flash ram, and gets cheaper 
 > > the more you buy it. When you can store 1K of date for a million users 
 > > for a hundred dollars or so, it's much better to keep the data on the 
 > > server. 
 > 
 > Okay, so we should throw out the cookie draft?  I'm not saying your point
 > of view is ridiculous, I'm just saying that there are cases in which
 > clientside data is desirable.
 > 
The fact is that different services will do it different ways,
including the "middle way" of using cookies to have client side tokens
which are keys to a server side database.

The cost of server side databases, which makes them a bit harder to
scale especially on distributed sites, is the cost of accessing and
maintaining the database.  The benefits of server side databases include
ease of control, ability to analyze the data, ability to change the
data format without having to maintain backward compatibility, etc.
The benefits of client side databases include not having to garbage
collect the server side database, efficiency of server side
processing (i.e. no file or database I/O required to access the
database).  So there's no need to resort to a "less filling, tastes
great" argument about this.

--Shel

Received on Sunday, 21 April 1996 17:52:33 UTC