Subject: Re: reject PaceErrVerb, and maybe PaceServiceError, too

From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 21:05:45 -0800

At 6:14 PM -0500 10/31/04, Robert Sayre wrote:
>Close PaceErrVerb. It's a nice idea that will never get done in this 
>WG, if it's even possible at all.

Agree. If it should be done, it should be done in the W3C, and I 
suspect that won't happen soon.

>PaceServiceError could work.

Agree.

>  However, we have no specified notion of Errors or Conformance, so 
>it's tough to tell whether the proposal would be helpful.

We do have enough of a concept of errors in the format, and certainly 
XML has lots of specific ways to be non-compliant.

>  If we come up with a status quo position on conformance, then I 
>would definitely want it in 1.0. A Dead Letter Office is better than 
>nothing. If we decide on something better, then it could be 
>something added later if required.

I'm more strongly in favor than that. The IETF has a long history of 
bad implementations of format protocols where we end up just sighing 
and saying, "man, there's a lot of bad programmers out there". It 
doesn't have to be that way. When I ran big email interop events, 
folks from Company A would walk over to folks from Company B with a 
trace of what was just sent and say "I'm sorry, but that's crap". 
Often, within a few hours, the folks from Company B would say "OK, 
let's see if this is better" and they would have fixed the bug. (Yes, 
they brought source code and compilers to the events; it was pretty 
cool.)

I fully believe that if there is an error-reporting facility, even if 
it is turned on only 10% of the time, it will be of great benefit to 
the entire Atom community. It will cause us to sigh less in five 
years. It will help the good developers fix their problems early, and 
it will help make it clearer who the good and bad developers are.

It's worth the effort.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 15:12:32 +0900

At 14:05 04/11/04, Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote:
 >>Close PaceErrVerb. It's a nice idea that will never get done in this WG, 
if it's even possible at all.
 >
 >Agree. If it should be done, it should be done in the W3C,

Why? HTTP is defined by the IETF, not the W3C (although the W3C
helped quite a bit).

Regards,    Martin.

---

From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 07:38:08 -0800

At 3:12 PM +0900 11/4/04, Martin Duerst wrote:
>>>Close PaceErrVerb. It's a nice idea that will never get done in 
>>>this WG, if it's even possible at all.
>>

HTTP *was* defined by the IETF, but the vast majority of operational 
HTTP experience is now in the W3C, I believe.

Regardless of that, PaceErrVerb is really an HTTP-wide change, and 
shouldn't be done in the Atompub WG. If the IETF thinks it's a good 
idea to do a major change to HTTP, that's great. PaceServiceError 
will give some good grist for how to do it and what to expect.

--Paul Hoffman, Director

---

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 17:30:19 +0100

Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote:
 > ...

Most if not all specs that extend HTTP seem to come out of the IETF, though.

> shouldn't be done in the Atompub WG. If the IETF thinks it's a good idea 
> to do a major change to HTTP, that's great. PaceServiceError will give 
> some good grist for how to do it and what to expect.

Defining a new HTTP method isn't a major change to HTTP -- HTTP is 
designed to allow extensibility (see 
<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc2616.html#method>). I *do* agree 
that *if* a new method is being defined, it should be done in a way so 
that it is useful outside the Atom context.

Best regards, Julian

-- 
<green/>bytes GmbH -- http://www.greenbytes.de -- tel:+492512807760

---

From: Bill de hÓra <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 17:06:10 +0000

Julian Reschke wrote:

> Defining a new HTTP method isn't a major change to HTTP -- 

I think Danny was thinking about the implementation and deployment 
aspects rather than the protcol itself.

> HTTP is 

I agree with this. Also I don't think ERR is general enough ie

  INFO
  WARN
  ...

ERR seems to be a special case of notification,

cheers
Bill

---

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 18:12:46 +0100

> aspects rather than the protcol itself.

Well, a trivial way to support ERR is not to implement it at all (you 
can then just use your server logs to check for problems).

Best regards, Julian

---

From: Bill de hÓra <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 17:41:41 +0000

> can then just use your server logs to check for problems).

I guess we're done then.

cheers
Bill

---

From: Robert Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 12:54:38 -0500

>> can then just use your server logs to check for problems).

That's totally inappropriate.

The Pace requires support for the method. If a server hasn't implemented 
a method, the correct response is 501. That said, supporting the Pace is 
trivial. All you have to do is send a 204 back to the client.

> I guess we're done then.

No, we were done when people insisted on using POST for an idempotent 
operation because of NewMethodPhobia.

Robert Sayre

---

From: Bill de hÓra <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 18:26:52 +0000

> operation because of NewMethodPhobia.

I was kidding.

cheers
Bill

---

From: Danny Ayers <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 19:51:05 +0100

> aspects rather than the protcol itself.

I don't think that was me, but I agree with the point. I haven't yet
heard anything to convince me that a new method is needed, that
adequate functionality for what Atom will use couldn't just as well be
offered by POST.

Cheers,
Danny.

-- 

http://dannyayers.com

---

From: Henry Story <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 17:04:05 +0100

I won't have time to work on PaceErrVerb and I think Asbjorn is happy 
for it to be moved out of the Atom group.

so +1 on closing PaceErrVerb.

Henry Story

On 1 Nov 2004, at 00:14, Robert Sayre wrote:

> PaceServiceError could work. However, we have no specified notion of 
> Errors or Conformance, so it's tough to tell whether the proposal 
> would be helpful. If we come up with a status quo position on 
> conformance, then I would definitely want it in 1.0. A Dead Letter 
> Office is better than nothing. If we decide on something better, then 
> it could be something added later if required.
>
> Robert Sayre
>