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Re: Feedback on the ping="" attribute (ISSUE-1)

From: Mark Baker <distobj@acm.org>
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 00:34:32 -0500
Message-ID: <e9dffd640711072134j291783e7s526664b98bfea71c@mail.gmail.com>
To: "Boris Zbarsky" <bzbarsky@mit.edu>
Cc: "HTML WG List" <public-html@w3.org>

On 11/7/07, Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@mit.edu> wrote:
> Mark Baker wrote:
> > As I see it, the message is "turn this URI into some data please",
> > which is safe and idempotent (by definition: all safe messages are
> > idempotent).
>
> Ian replied to this with pretty much exactly what I had been going to say.  I
> just want to reiterate that the idea of "ping" is to track what the user
> selects.  Each time the user selects something, it's a new event that needs to
> be recorded.

I understand, and that's fine.

> Hence it's non-idempotent.

No.  The implementation is non-idempotent, the message is not.

Consider that when my Web server receives GET requests, it logs
(appends) a record of that in a log file.  Does that make the message
non-idempotent and non-safe?  No, of course not, because GET messages
are safe by *definition*.  It does make the implementation both those
things though.

Until this distinction is appreciated, I don't think we're going to
find any further common ground.

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.         http://www.markbaker.ca
Coactus; Web-inspired integration strategies  http://www.coactus.com
Received on Thursday, 8 November 2007 05:34:42 UTC

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