REPORT method considered harmful

I don't have any time to take this on, but at some point the TAG
should consider an issue regarding the problems caused by the REPORT
method and its harm to the Web architecture due to

   a) replacing identification of important resources via URIs
      with limited indirect access via a related resource:

      <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3253.txt> section 3.6

      [should have used a link to a version history resource].

   b) use as an ad-hoc query-language without consideration for caches:

      <http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-dusseault- 
caldav-09.txt>

      [should be using links to related resources].

   c) batching multiple independent requests through a single method:

      <http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/subversion/libsvn_ra_dav/ 
protocol>

      [should be using a client implementation that supported  
pipelining].

I would not be surprised to see SOAP messages carried via REPORT.
The method has no distinguishable semantics from POST aside from
the ability to claim that it isn't just tunneling through POST.

Cheers,

Roy T. Fielding                            <http://roy.gbiv.com/>
Chief Scientist, Day Software              <http://www.day.com/>

Received on Thursday, 29 December 2005 01:05:14 UTC