Re: Proposal (I-D) for extending HTTP to support out-of-order responses
Roy T. Fielding (fielding@ebuilt.com)
Thu, 12 Apr 2001 13:58:35 -0700
> 2 thoughts, the first is just a throw-away:
>
> 1 - HTTP is stateless. indeed 2616 in its intro describes itself this
> way.. this is a pretty fundamental change, even as an optional
> extension.. so the intro should probably discuss it. that's all.
HTTP is stateless in the sense that all of the information needed to
interpret and handle a request is present in that request and not based
on a prior request's leftover state. A RID doesn't change that in
principle, though it would certainly complicate the implementation
to handle out-of-order responses. On the server-side, the ability
to have out-of-order responses makes it easier to partition pipelined
requests out to multiple server instances, which is one of the main
reasons why HTTP is stateless.
....Roy