I-D ACTION:draft-kristol-http-state-info-00.txt, .ps

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       Title     : Proposed HTTP State-Info Mechanism                      
       Author(s) : D. Kristol
       Filename  : draft-kristol-http-state-info-00.txt, .ps
       Pages     : 7
       Date      : 08/23/1995

HTTP, the protocol that underpins the World-Wide Web (WWW), is stateless.  
That is, each request stands on its own; origin servers don't need to 
remember what happened with previous requests to service a new one.  
Statelessness is a mixed blessing, because there are potential WWW 
applications, like ``shopping baskets'' and library browsing, for which the
history of a user's actions is useful or essential.                    

This proposal outlines a way to introduce state into HTTP.  A new 
request/response header, State-Info, carries the state back and forth, thus
relieving the origin server from needing to keep an extensive per-user or 
per-connection database.  The changes required to user agents, origin 
servers, and proxy servers to support State-Info are very modest.          

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Received on Thursday, 24 August 1995 15:48:45 UTC