Use of Status Code 500

• From: Svensson, Lars <l.svensson@d-nb.de>
• Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 08:53:28 +0200
• To: <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>
• Message-ID: <6DA97EFF2763174B8BDC409CA197298409B6FB60@dbf-ex.AD.DDB.DE>

At my place we're a bit unsure of the use of Status Code 500. One of our
apps (a distributed one) returns a SC 500 when there is a communication
errror with one of the subsystems. This caused problems when we upgraded
our Tomcats to use load-balancing, since the mod-jk now thinks the
Tomcat returning SC 500 isn't responding properly and switches the
session to the other Tomcat instance. If the user now repeats the same
action and the communication error is still there -- leading to a 500
again--, the mod-jk will block both Tomcats and the user cannot login
again.

So: Is 500 the correct error code to send in this case and -- if not --
which one should I use?

Thanks in advance,

Lars

Received on Wednesday, 2 September 2009 07:04:04 UTC