- From: Roy T. Fielding <fielding@avron.ICS.UCI.EDU>
- Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 00:54:42 -0800
- To: Koen Holtman <koen@win.tue.nl>
- Cc: http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
>>State tracking has never been considered important to
>>HTTP/1.1
>
> Huh? Roy, you must be aware that we have a state management subgroup,
> which did not at all conclude that state management was not important
> for HTTP/1.1.
Of course I am aware of it -- I'm in it. What is important for
HTTP/1.1 are those issues which require a new protocol version to
indicate that the client and/or server supports that capability or
at least recognizes that feature of HTTP. State management is
completeley (last time I checked) orthogonal to the HTTP version
number, and thus can be progressed as a separate specification
[the one being worked on by the state management subgroup].
State management is orthogonal to the HTTP version because we defined
a mechanism for identifying any given response header field as carrying
stateful (i.e., non-cachable or private) information. The reason why
this was done (as opposed to just defining a single mechanism within
the standard) is because
a) at the time, there were two competing proposals with no resolution
in sight [this is no longer true];
b) there was no clear consensus that state management within the
protocol headers of a stateless protocol was even a good idea,
let alone one that could be approved within a fast-track standard.
...Roy T. Fielding
Department of Information & Computer Science (fielding@ics.uci.edu)
University of California, Irvine, CA 92717-3425 fax:+1(714)824-4056
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/
Received on Thursday, 29 February 1996 01:06:26 UTC