Re: New "200 OK" status codes, PATCH & PROPFIND

On Aug 6, 2007, at 5:34 PM, James M Snell wrote:
> Or it won't be enough and people still won't use it as specified.  I'm
> not saying it's a good thing, but a new status code is likely the more
> reliable of the two options.

I don't see how we can guess that.  The existing mechanism is already
deployed, which means no technology changes other than the preexisting
task of fixing broken configurations.  Content-Location has a lot of
value outside HTTP (think mail gateways and external archives), so
there are side benefits to using it correctly.

After all, there were many good reasons for us choosing this design
in the first place, and I really don't have any confidence that the
folks who currently incorrectly implement content-location will have
any more success correctly implementing a new status code or headers.
In my opinion, choosing a new status code for 2xx (content in response)
is no more likely to succeed than 200+Content-Location indicating
the same for all methods.  I suggest, however, that any additions to
HTTP need to be proven first by implementations, and it would be very
annoying to deploy a new status code only to find out later that we
didn't need it.  Defining new things is a serious brain tax.

....Roy

Received on Tuesday, 7 August 2007 02:36:55 UTC