Re: On pipelining -Reply -Reply

>> server side includes in GETs of html documents might cause 
> changes in  "state" variables.).
>>That's not allowed. GET is idempotent which implies it must
>be stateless.
>You should be using POST for that sort of thing.

Interesting point.

But does that mean that  proper http/1.1 server-software should
enforce this? That server software should somehow not allow
GET to invoke scripts, etc. that might change "state" variables. 
That's a tough requirement (from a server author's point of view).

Also, what, if a response has an immediate exipiration (say, it's
generated by
a script that changes state variables, or it's generated from an SHTML
resource that
contains hit counts, time of day, or other dynamic elements).

My reading of idempotency suggests that in such cases the
"statelessness"
of GET is no longer a constraint. 

Received on Friday, 21 January 2000 09:49:30 UTC