- From: Roy T. Fielding <fielding@kiwi.ics.uci.edu>
- Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 10:41:19 -0700
- To: Dave Kristol <dmk@research.bell-labs.com>
- Cc: http-wg@hplb.hpl.hp.com
>I'm inclined to agree with Roy, with the following additional caveat: >please define "upstream" and "downstream". They always confuse me and, >I suspect, others. Please don't say "it's obvious". I don't know >whether requests flow upstream or downstream. Upstream and downstream are flow, i.e., all messages flow from upstream to downstream. There aren't that many occurrences of any of these terms, but the distinction can be important. For example, in section 13.11 we have All methods that might be expected to cause modifications to the origin server's resources MUST be written through to the origin server. This currently includes all methods except for GET and HEAD. A cache MUST NOT reply to such a request from a client before having transmitted the request to the inbound server, and having received a corresponding response from the inbound server. This does not prevent a proxy cache from sending a 100 (Continue) response before the inbound server has sent its final reply. where the term "inbound server" is used to refer to first the downstream server and then the upstream server in the same sentence, since they are the same thing when the first mention is for the request and the second for the response. Likewise, the use of "upstream" in the definition of Via is useful to indicate the bidirectionality of that header field. ....Roy
Received on Thursday, 10 September 1998 11:01:02 UTC