Re: HTTP Methods

Patrick Stickler wrote:
> 
> 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.

How about a custom HTTP header with a URI of
the description? That does require two
request/response transactions, first to get
the custom header and then a second one
on the designated description URI, but that is
mitigated by the fact that you can just do a 
HEAD for the first request.

	-joe

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Received on Wednesday, 25 February 2004 09:03:11 UTC