- From: Geoffrey M. Clemm <gclemm@atria.com>
- Date: Sat, 16 Jan 1999 11:56:16 -0500
- To: w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
Many of the new methods being defined for WebDAV versioning have an XML document as the value of their request and/or response body. While designing the protocol, I am continually faced with the question: Should an input parameter to the method be represented as a new XML element in the request body or as a new request header? Similarly, should an output parameter to the method be represented as a new XML element in the response body or as a new respose header? In each case, there is backward compatibility, since downlevel clients would just not generate the header/element, and downlevel servers would just ignore the unknown header/element. An argument for the XML element is that the contents of the XML element can hold a much wider range of data, and can have its structure defined, at least in a coarse syntactic fashion, with a DTD. Another argument for the XML element is that you don't have to worry about proxies stripping off headers they don't recognize. The only argument I can think of for using a header is that it is the only technique applicable when the body is being used for some other purpose (such as GET/PUT). One possible rule of thumb: If the request/response body is an XML document, then the request/response parameters should be specified as XML elements. Only if the body is not an XML document should parameters be specified as headers. Comments? Cheers, Geoff --- Geoffrey M. Clemm Chief Engineer, Configuration Management Business Unit Rational Software Corporation (781) 676-2684 geoffrey.clemm@rational.com http://www.rational.com
Received on Saturday, 16 January 1999 21:39:25 UTC