Re: OPTIONS and TRACE vis a vis CGI applications

On Wed, 11 Mar 1998, David W. Morris wrote:

> It is my sense from list postings that a TRACE or OPTIONS request which
> referenced a specific resource which a server handed to an external
> application such as a CGI program should be handed to that program 
> for handling.
> 
> That is:
>    OPTIONS /cgi-bin/somescript HTTP/1.1
> or
>    TRACE /cgi-bin/somescript HTTP/1.1
> should be handled by the application which would respond to a GET or HEAD
> of the same resource.

  I would agree for OPTIONS, since it is probably the capabilities of the
CGI or other sub-server that the requestor is interested in (although my
experience has usually been that CGIs often respond as though the method
were GET or POST because the authors don't check).

  I can't think of any reason why TRACE would require the participation of
the resource - it's purpose is just to reflect the headers as received,
and the server itself can do that just fine.