OPTIONS * (Was: RE: Comments on draft-dusseault-http-patch-00)

> Note that the proposed "OPTIONS *" functionality will not 
> work anyway. 
> Is it worth keeping the remainder?

OPTIONS * is an HTTP feature, not a WebDAV feature that we can
keep or throw away.  It's been there for years.  I haven't seen
much opposition to the feature, outside of a few people on the
WebDAV mailing list.  It's got useful semantics.

It's too bad, as Julian has pointed out in the past, that the
Java servlet design made it difficult to add stuff to OPTIONS *.
(It's not impossible, just difficult.  I can point to existence
proofs that it's possible, it just requires taking over the root
namespace with a servlet application, or doing something outside
the servlet framework.)  To me, that argues for fixes to the 
Java servlet functionality, not dropping an HTTP feature.  If
Microsoft "broke" OPTIONS * in its ISAPI design, the standards
community would not be so likely to quietly drop support for it.

Lisa

Received on Monday, 24 November 2003 13:05:04 UTC