Re: Seeking clarification about the use of the HTTP binding

Mark Baker writes:

>> Sweet, sweet irony. 8-)

Or maybe a good example of keeping it simple.  Nothing prevents anyone 
from publishing a specification for a different/enhanced HTTP binding that 
provides richer features and more complex MEPs, which I believe this use 
case to be.  Basing core interop on simple request/response seems to me to 
be a good 80/20 point, not an oversight.  I have no problem with someone 
doing another binding aimed more at HTTP exploitation, if there's user 
demand.  I do think there is a question about about how any 
application-level response is modeled.  It's one thing to have an 
acknowledged one-way transmission, which is what my naive understanding 
says you get with a 202.  It's another to have the response delivered 
through another connection, through addressing that has to be worked out, 
etc.  The key thing that a request/response MEP gives you, IMO, is that 
the response is implicitly addressed to the requester.  Usually there is 
also some sharing of connection infrastructure, particularly in the case 
of a short-lived request/response.  That's what we're modelling with the 
existing HTTP binding and I think it's a good 80/20 point.

--------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn 
IBM Corporation
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
--------------------------------------








Mark Baker <distobj@acm.org>
11/12/2004 04:11 PM

 
        To:     noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com
        cc:     Hugo Haas <hugo@w3.org>, www-ws-desc@w3.org, xml-dist-app@w3.org
        Subject:        Re: Seeking clarification about the use of the HTTP binding


On Fri, Nov 12, 2004 at 02:47:01PM -0500, noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com 
wrote:
> Hmm.  So an interesting question is whether the HTTP binding ever sends 
a 
> 202.

Ah, good point.

It's unfortunate we (XMLP) chose to declare the state transition on
"200" rather than "2xx", but IIRC, there was considerable debate about
this point, as those promoting "protocol independence" feared that
exposing too much of HTTP to the application was a bad idea.  Support
for 2xx used to be there[1], but was removed and replaced by [2] as a
result (IIRC).

Sweet, sweet irony. 8-)

 [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-soap12-part2-20011217/#NFDC
 [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/PR-soap12-part2-20030507/#httpoptionality

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca

Received on Friday, 12 November 2004 21:16:48 UTC