Additional HTTP Status Codes - "Request Too Onerous"

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Hi all,

Apologies if I'm speaking out of turn, but is there a case to be made
for a "Request Too Onerous" status code to be included in the draft[1]?

There are occasions where a web service might want to dissuade user
agents from:

a) requesting too large a response (e.g. tell me everything you know)
b) requesting too much computation (e.g. solve this Travelling
Salesman Problem for more nodes than is tractable)

In each case a client would know that a simpler request is more likely
to succeed. As far as I can tell, the use case is not covered by any
other status code (not 400 as the request is well-formed; not 500 as
the server didn't break; not 503 as there's no expectation that the
request might be serviceable at a later date).

This would complement the proposed 429 Too Many Requests, covering the
other case where one might want to tame over-demanding clients.

Kind regards,

Alexander

[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-nottingham-http-new-status-03

- -- 
Alexander Dutton
Developer, InfoDev, data.ox.ac.uk, OxPoints
Oxford University Computing Services, ℡ 01865 (6)13483
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Received on Wednesday, 9 November 2011 15:39:12 UTC