Intepretation: whenToUseGet-7

I'm having trouble interpreting the section of the IRC logs on this
issue.

> 1. GET should be encouraged, not deprecated, in XForms 
> 
> TBL: I think that the XForms WG didn't have any force behind 
> decision to deprecate GET, so this part is done. 

I don't know what that means. Is XForms merely supposed to take out the
deprecation? Or are is this saying that they can't deprecate something
from the IETF? Or ....?

> I propose we write this up as a hole in the architecture - the 
> parameters are ridiculous to represent as an identifier, but 
> it's nonetheless idempotent. There should be something just 
> like POST but with QUERY to tell the proxy that there are no 
> side effects. 

I could interepret this two ways. One is: "In general, XForms results
will be structured as XML so they should use QUERY instead of GET. So
the deprecation of GET is appropriate." Another interpretation is: "in
some RARE cases the information to be processed will be very complicated
and thus not amenable to mapping into the identifier namespace and in
those RARE cases it makes better sense to use QUERY."

I am very nervous about undercutting the URI namespace. As TimBL said:

"URIs are the lynchpin of the Web arch"

The vast majority of safe, idempotent forms can and should be mapped
into the URI namespace. Furthermore POST can turn *on* caching.
Therefore I see the benefits of QUERY as being minor, especially when
judged against the potential confusion it will cause when people start
using it instead of GET for things that could have been mapped to
identifiers.

 Paul Prescod

Received on Tuesday, 19 February 2002 09:20:17 UTC