- From: Mark Baker <distobj@acm.org>
- Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 21:15:00 -0500 (EST)
- To: anne@manes.net (Anne Thomas Manes)
- Cc: hugo@w3.org (Hugo Haas), www-ws-arch@w3.org
> Ramblings on the subject: > > Web resources are not reliable, stable, or predictable. Links break all the > time. Web sites aren't necessarily available 24 hours a day. Is it > appropriate to impose a higher level of reliability, stability, and > predictability on Web services? > > I don't think it is. To some degree this issue is dealt with in the realm of > discovery. If your link to a web service fails, you can rediscover it. Not > all web services will be available all the time. Some web service providers > may want to arbitrarily terminate the services that they offer. > > I don't think it's within our charter to impose these requirements on people > who build web services. > > I do think it's appropriate to ensure the reliability, stability, and > predictability of both web services technology and web services standards. Agreed. Using the example of Web resources, of which many are clearly not very stable, Web architecture supports stability, as it provides a means for resources to move (HTTP redirection, including both permanent and temporary redirection). Also, HTTP defines the 410 response code (Gone) which can be used to tell clients that the resource is not just "not found" (404), but that the publisher of that resource has deliberately removed it. I believe it's important that any architecture using URIs support redirection, and response codes like 410, because sometimes the things identified by URIs *do* move or disappear. MB -- Mark Baker, Chief Science Officer, Planetfred, Inc. Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA. mbaker@planetfred.com http://www.markbaker.ca http://www.planetfred.com
Received on Wednesday, 20 March 2002 21:10:11 UTC