Re: REPOST (was: HTTP working group status & issues)
Koen Holtman (koen@win.tue.nl)
Thu, 3 Oct 1996 19:18:22 +0200 (MET DST)
Foteos Macrides:
>
[...]
> This perhaps still confuses two different things that current
>UAs do not distinguish clearly when handling FORMs, but UAs of the
>future should.
[...]
>The first refers to a "cache", in the conventional sense, of
>the *reply* entity (body) from the previous submission, whereas
>the second refers to the set of information needed to repeat
>the submission for a new reply.
I understand the distinction, but this issue is orthogonal to HTTP
protocol extensions as far as I can see, so it should not be discussed
on this list.
[....]
[Koen:]
>>Thus, introducing a `Redo-Safe: yes' header would make more sense
>>than `Idempotent: yes'.
>
> The concept of "safe" is subject to a variety of interpetations,
>in contrast to "idempotent", which can be defined precisely.
The 1.1 spec defines both "safe" and "idempotent" precisely. With the
1.1 definitions, the header name we want is "Redo-Safe", not
"Idempotent".
The "idempotent" definition in the 1.1 spec talks about _all_ side
effects, not just unsafe side effects. This makes "idempotent" a
pretty useless term for discussing real-life http applications.
> Fote
Koen.