Re: HTTP Methods

On Feb 25, 2004, at 15:28, ext Jon Hanna wrote:

>
> Quoting Patrick Stickler <patrick.stickler@nokia.com>:
>
>>
>>
>> On Feb 25, 2004, at 12:40, ext Jon Hanna wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> ... I remain unconvinced of the case
>>> for MGET.
>>
>> Can you demonstrate how the equivalent behavior can be
>> implemented using the existing methods without resulting
>> in either (a) multiple requests for each single logical
>> operation or (b) unintended side effects in the case of
>> misunderstanding between client and server, or (c) efficient
>> and explicit failure if the request is not understood?
>
> I'll qualify "unconvinced" as meaning "I've only looked at this a tiny 
> bit, and
> it didn't convince me" as opposed to "I've looked at this a lot and I 
> think
> it's wrong". It's an uninformed instinct thing.
>
> That said, and given that URIQA is on my list of stuff I want to look 
> at in the
> near future (but I've been putting it off until after my current paying
> project) why not GET application/rdf+xml rather than MGETting?

What if the resource denoted by the URI has an RDF/XML representation
yet you don't want the representation of the resource, you want its
description.

Content negotation is about selecting between representations.

While it might be possible to make it work for differentiating
between representations and descriptions, it precludes the ability
to select between different encodings of a description and also
(even if a special MIME type is used for descriptions) does not
make it possible to ask for descriptions of descriptions as opposed
to a representation of the description itself.

Patrick


> Granted an attempt to do so will result in most servers sending you 
> text/html or
> whatever and hoping for the best, but you can stop listening after the 
> headers,
> it seems an explicit enough failure.
>
> -- 
> Jon Hanna
> <http://www.hackcraft.net/>
> "…it has been truly said that hackers have even more words for
> equipment failures than Yiddish has for obnoxious people." - jargon.txt
>
>

--

Patrick Stickler
Nokia, Finland
patrick.stickler@nokia.com

Received on Wednesday, 25 February 2004 08:45:37 UTC