Translation in the Tower of Babble

I believe that there are too many different unstated assumptions held by
members of this group for this group to be ready to deal with specific
locking proposals. The fact that Geoff, Eric and RFC 2518 can come out with
such different proposals helps to illustrate the issue. Rather than
attempting to achieve consensus in one fell swoop by having everyone read
and critique full proposals I would suggest that we start from a simpler
basis. Let us first see if we can establish agreement on some very basic
precepts. I will start with just one precept and see if we can get agreement
on just that.

Precept #1 - HTTP clients send HTTP request messages to resources that
respond with HTTP response messages.

Corollary #1.1 - All HTTP proposals can only be written in terms of how a
resource processes a HTTP request from a HTTP client and generates a HTTP
response as a result.

Corollary #1.2 - HTTP requests do not necessarily have to be handled by HTTP
resources. For example, it is possible to send a HTTP request with a FTP
request-URI. Some HTTP proxies are set up to act as gateways that can handle
translating the HTTP request into a FTP request and then translate the FTP
response into a HTTP response. That is why precept #1 states "...to
resources..." rather than specifying a HTTP resource.

Corollary #1.3 - Since HTTP request messages can only be handled by
resources which respond with HTTP response messages then even error messages
such as "Not Found" must have been generated by a resource.

Let's see if we can just get agreement on this single precept and its
corollaries.

	Merci,

			Yaron

Received on Monday, 3 January 2000 14:51:04 UTC