Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-http-ses-ext-01.txt

First of all, I'd like to remind everyone that there is a state 
management subgroup to this working group, and that we've worked over the 
past few months to produce an Internet Draft (which was submitted 
today).  While I agree that we should review Phillip's draft and see what 
it has to offer, I am frustrated to see two parallel development efforts 
without a clear sense of the differences between them.

Please follow up any process comments related to the above paragraph to 
myself and the working group chairs, _not_ to the list as a whole.  
Include Phillip and <state@xent.w3.org> if you do.

On Thu, 22 Feb 1996, BearHeart / Bill Weinman wrote:
>    1) A specification for a CGI variable that would indicate 
> to a CGI program that a session is persistent. Perhaps called 
> SERVER_CONNECTION it would have the content of the *server's* 
> Connection: header for the last transaction. Using this with the 
> HTTP_CONNECTION variable would allow a CGI program to determine 
> if it's dealing with a persistent connection. 
> 
>    This information would be useful for CGI state management. 

I can't see why it would be useful.  Could you please give an example?

>    2) A method for a CGI program to originate request for a 
> persistent connection. Simply make the protocol bi-directional. 
> If the server originates a "Connection: persist" to the client, 
> the client may respond back with "Connection: persist" and the 
> exchanges could continue as already specified. 

This makes no sense to me.  Why would a server or a server extension want 
to request a persistent connection from a client that did not indicate 
persistent capabilities?

Marc Hedlund <marc@organic.com> <hedlund@best.com>