Re: holding connections open: a modest proposal
John Franks (john@math.nwu.edu)
Tue, 13 Sep 94 17:32:03 CDT
In article <9409131300.AA28745@dxmint.cern.ch>, Dave Kristol writes:
>
> I want to emphasize again that I have in mind a SMALL change. The
> reason is simple. With this small change we can make evolutionary
> changes to the components we have, without introducing a stage where
> old versions of a client or server can't talk to the new versions.
> Other proposals (except Pragma: Keep-connection; I guess my proposal is
> equivalent to an implicit Pragma: Keep-connection.), however
> sophisticated (and complicated), introduce incompatibities, and are
> therefore less desirable.
>
I don't think there are incompatibilities with the MGET proposal.
An old client with a new server would send only GET which the
server would honor. A new client with an old server would send
an MGET and get a "method not supported" message and could repeat
the request with a series of GETS. This is comparable to a new
client with "keep connection" dealing with an old server.
--
John Franks Dept of Math. Northwestern University
john@math.nwu.edu