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Re: MS thinks HTTP Needs Replacing???

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: MS thinks HTTP Needs Replacing???
• From: Alaric Snell <alaric@a...>
• Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 11:30:19 +0000
• In-reply-to: <1014756955.2262.31.camel@l...>
• References: <NCBBKFMJCLIMOBIGKFMJOEANHEAA.ldodds@i...> <1014756955.2262.31.camel@l...>

On Tuesday 26 February 2002 20:55, Simon St.Laurent wrote:
>
> "What makes HTTP significantly different from RPC is that the requests
> are directed to resources using a generic interface with standard
> semantics that can be interpreted by intermediaries almost as well as by
> the machines that originate services."
>
> That's called redefining something in order to prove that you are not
> it.  It's a nice rhetorical trick, and useful with people who already
> believe your definitions, but I don't think Fielding escapes all claims
> that the HTTP protocol is itself RPC.

I would be inclined to agree with Simon here... CORBA's IIOP, RMI, and good 
'ole ONC RPC can all be described as 'requests directed to resources using a 
generic interface with standard semantics that can be interpreted by 
intermediaries almost as well as by the machines that originate services" :-)

There are CORBA/RMI/ONCRPC proxies and gateways and debugging tools and so 
on...

The one thing that HTTP has and most RPC protocols lack is that there is a 
way of flagging a request as being cacheable (making it a GET), and it's not 
even that well done in HTTP.

I'm designing an RPC protocol that has better caching than HTTP. Service 
providers can even 'prefill' the cache by filling a table with what most 
people would call 'static content', which the underlying server 
implementation might use to broadcast out information by satellite to 
worldwide caches, Akamai-style...

Cache entries contain patterns that might match lots of different possible 
requests and return the same response. This is like responding to an HTTP GET 
with (in a header) a regular expression matching other URLs that should 
return the same response. This is handy for situations like the use of image 
buttons in HTML GET forms; it causes two extra parameters, 'x' and 'y', 
recording the exact position the user clicked in the button to be passed - 
and screws up caching based upon URL alone.

ABS

-- 
                               Alaric B. Snell
 http://www.alaric-snell.com/  http://RFC.net/  http://www.warhead.org.uk/
   Any sufficiently advanced technology can be emulated in software  

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    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>

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