Re: PaceBatch and pipelining

[Tim Bray <Tim.Bray@xxxxxxx>]

On Jun 26, 2005, at 7:40 PM, Mark Baker wrote:

> Moreover, the
> problems with batching non-idempotent requests isn't at all  
> specific to
> HTTP pipelining, it's just inherrent to any batch mechanism, including
> PaceBatch.  That is, if you POST a BatchRequest with two app:Post
> requests embedded, you're going to have exactly the same issues as
> with two pipelined HTTP POST requests.

Except for, PaceBatch recognizes that partial success is a  
possibility and specifies measures (no re-using URIs) to limit the  
damage.  Curious: is there any prior art in using HTTP to do this  
kind of thing?

> So I'm -1 on PaceBatch, but I'd support APP calling out the use of  
> HTTP
> pipelining for batching purposes (with a caveat about going against  
> the
> SHOULD NOT recommendation from 2616, of course).

So, let me see... we could adopt an approach which is limited to HTTP  
while flying in the face of a SHOULD in its RFC, or we could adopt  
one which which breaks no rules and is potentially usable on a wide  
variety of protocols including HTTP.  Seems like a no-brainer to me.   
(Assuming we believe there's a real quantitative optimization to be  
had). -Tim