Re: Background information on GET and XForms (was: GET should be encouraged...)

Martin Duerst wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> The fact that 'urlencoded' is the only thing that currently works
> well with GET is largely a result of early incomplete implementations
> and deployment dependencies.
> 
> As far as I understand, there is nothing against GET with body,
> and it should be seriously considered for XForms.

I do not believe this is the case. The semantic of GET is "here is a URI
identifying a resource. Please get it for me." A body makes no sense in
that context. It would be analogous to sending a body with a SQL query.
The fact that GET does not take a body forces information designers to
organize their databases in an addressable form (as the relational model
forces you into tables). Some people call this process "resource
modeling." If people start sending GET bodies then they will not be
encouraged (er, forced) to do proper resource modeling and the quantity
of useful addresses on the Web will drop.

If all you want is a cacheable query with a body, you can use POST. POST
has explicit support for cached results.

 Paul Prescod

Received on Monday, 28 January 2002 03:21:40 UTC