Issue 012: EPR Lifetime

 

Statement of issue:

At the moment there is no specification of the lifetime of an Endpoint
Reference.

What needs to be decided is:

1)       Is there a need to provide a mechanism for management of EPR
lifetime? If yes then what should it do?

2)       Or: Is there a need to make some statement concerning an
implied EPR lifetime? If yes then what?

 

Arguments Against:

1)       The web has gone well enough up to now with the tacit
assumption that uri's live forever.

2)       There is nothing like a 404 to indicate that the EPR you seek
has gone missing. The service thus has complete control over expiration.

3)       Much complexity especially in request-response MEPs. A lot of
this complexity will arise from treatment of the case of EPRs expiring
between receipt of request and receipt of response.  This complexity
will extend to further complicate all protocols that permit the use of
EPR expiration.

 

Arguments in Favor:

1)       Provides a handy way for the EPR minter to control cache
contents.

 

 

 

General Puzzlements:

1)       Would EPRs compare equal if their expiration times were not
equal?

2)       If one received a message with an expired EPR in its to:, whan
ought it to be dropped?

3)       If one received an expired EPR in its replyto: ought the
message be discarded?