URIs vs EPRs

On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 05:24:21PM -0800, David Orchard wrote:
> It is a trade-off between complexity and simplicity.  We have found over
> and over again that we cannot build the kinds of systems we'd like to
> with just URIs.  We can build the systems we want with URIs + ref
> properties (or in parallel incarnation of HTTP cookies).

Presumably you mean reference parameters?  And I'd agree, sometimes you
do need shared state.  What you don't need though, in my experience, is
to bundle the state or a reference to it with the identifier, and call
the resulting beast an identifier, since that's not what it is.  Even
the current spec recognizes this;

"A reference may contain a number of individual parameters which are
associated with the endpoint to facilitate a particular interaction."

So IMO, you can't get off that easy by claiming that URIs are
insufficient because they don't have an explicit equivalent for
reference parameters, since a superior design would separate the
identifier from the state, as cookies do for HTTP, or, say, WS-Context
does (AIUI) for SOAP based interactions.

>Turns out not
> having echoing capabilities is too simple.   

??

Mark.

Received on Sunday, 7 November 2004 05:28:20 UTC