- From: David W. Morris <dwm@shell.portal.com>
- Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 17:58:26 -0700 (PDT)
- To: Mike Meyer <mwm@contessa.phone.net>
- Cc: http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com, http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
On Tue, 24 Sep 1996, Mike Meyer wrote: > > the header suggestion (e.g. Idempotent: yes | no) has the benefit that > > CGI scripts can include it as META tag [...] The problem, though, is that it > > "begs" to be used for GET as well. > > This isn't a problem, this is a feature. I *want* to be able to tag > the results of a GET as NOT being idempotent. Or can you provide a way > to create a link (as opposed to a form submit button) that uses POST > for data? As I believe Jeffry Mogul has already presented, it would break the assumptions of some very important caches if they can't assume idempotence of GET. For a combination of performance and bandwidth conservation, these caches assume a GET (w/o ?querypart) might be cached and forward the request 'up' thru a series of hierarichical caches. A request known to not be idempotent is sent directly to the origin server. This approach is used where the connectivity to the rest of the world is very expensive and hence the Internet connection is bandwidth constrained. Dave Morris
Received on Tuesday, 24 September 1996 18:05:19 UTC