Re: Server push - use cases

Hi Asbjørn,

On Mon, Aug 14, 2023 at 12:46:42PM +0200, Asbjørn Ulsberg wrote:
> HTTP Server Push has been debated much in the API community, although
> widespread adoption has yet to materialise. I presented some of the use-cases
> at the 2019 HTTP Workshop, which can be viewed here:
> 
> https://asbjornu.github.io/prefer-push-presentation/

Thanks for sharing. Sadly without the explanations, it's not obvious
where you're seeing a gain in the example, because the provided example
turns a moderately sized responses into 4 slightly smaller ones which
together are twice as large.

> Kévin Dunglas has been a pioneer in the space, with his implementation of Server Push called "Vulcain":
> 
> https://github.com/dunglas/vulcain
> 
> I would love to see more, not less, adoption of Server Push going forward.
> The web isn't browser-only; if it was, the HTTP specification would have
> dropped  support for other methods than GET + POST long ago (as an
> example). Thankfully, it hasn't, and I think Server Push deserves a similar
> treatment.

For sure the web is not just browsers, but likewise it could be said
that whenever a server decides to deliver multiple responses it could
also coalesce them into a composite one that the client would get at
once. And since push is useful in this case when the requester has a
cache, populating a cache from multiple responses or from collected
elements is not different.

The real benefit of push *was* for browsers, on high-latency links,
where the server could decide to push some objects the client had not
yet requested. We all know the pros and cons (saving a round-trip vs
sending objects already present there, who's responsible for that
object's presence in the cache, etc). But here unless I'm not getting
it from the presentation, the server did not really use push for what
it provides, it used it as a way to split the response, just as if it
had sent a multi-part response in some sort.

Regards,
Willy

Received on Monday, 14 August 2023 13:40:21 UTC