Re: Temporally extended sessions

Paul Prescod wrote:

> I think that in most cases there is virtue in making temporally extended 
> sessions into URI-addressable, HTTP-retrievable resources. HTTP does not 
> itself have a notion of temporally extended session, but neither does it 
> have a notion of "map" or "auction" and yet it delivers representations 
> of resources of those types. I don't dispute that HTTP has limitations. 
> But I think that there is a lot of "shortcut thinking" when it comes to 
> enumerating those limitations. "HTTP doesn't have X as a first-class 
> concept therefore HTTP is not appropriate for X." That needs to be 
> demonstrated, not asserted.

Indeed, I regularly access my bank account through a web browser, with 
all sorts of session semantics - get account balances, pay bills, 
transfer funds, etc...  At one level I'm horrified by the kludginess of 
the techniques the server uses to fake session context, but hey, it 
beats standing in line in front of a teller. -Tim

Received on Tuesday, 28 January 2003 15:35:12 UTC