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Re: issue: SOAP requirements


On Mar 18, 2005, at 9:30 AM, Joe Gregorio wrote:

"The feed format and HTTP will be used as the basis
of work on a standards-track document specifying the editing
protocol." [1]

A system that only allows GET and POST and strips
headers that it doesn't know about *is not* HTTP and
I believe falls outside our charter.

For the record, as co-chair, it is my impression that Joe has historically won this argument and it is the rough consensus of the WG that we should have a 4-verb publishing protocol (and also a SOAP wrapper).

However, speaking personally, I simply can't let the above go unrefuted; the Web, as a billion or more people use it every day, is overwhelmingly based on two verbs and works just fine. HTTP, as deployed and used today, is pretty well a two-verb protocol. It would be totally within the bounds of our charter, as most reasonable people would read it, to specify a two-verb Atom Publishing Protocol.

So, there may be good technical reasons for going with four verbs. But please let's not fool ourself that we're doing it because our charter says we have to or because HTTP somehow requires it.

Joe, you have perfectly good arguments for PUT and DELETE based on efficiency in message dispatching and so on. I've heard you make them and I think they are vastly preferable to the argument-from-scripture above. -Tim