Re: Holding connections open: an immodest proposal

John Ludeman (johnl@microsoft.com)
Sat, 17 Sep 1994 00:09:38 +0200

----------
| From: Joe English <jenglish@crl.com>
|
| >One point:
| > BURN PRAGMAS !
| > PRAGMAS ? - JUST SAY NO.
| >
| >Pragma keep alive is NOT acceptable. You are modifying the protocol
completely
| >and not even using a tag. METHOD /url/ HTTP/2.0 is the only
acceptable solution
|
| I concur wholeheartedly.
|
| "Session-oriented" HTTP where the connection stays open
| may be useful in the future, but a single-transaction,
| multiple-object GET request is easier to do and solves
| a lot of problems *today*.

Actually, the exact opposite is true. Pragma: Keep-connection is
easier to do and solves the problem today (including backward
compatability). MGET does not work today and requires significant
changes on both the server and client. In addition, Pragmas provide
real protocol negotiation, something that is sorely lacking in HTTP.

I still think MGET is good and should be added AS LONG AS IT'S DONE IN
A SINGLE SESSION!! Let's not design inefficiences into the protocol.
Note that with Pragma: Keep-connection, it could be used with MGET to
easily achieve the single session behaviour for servers/clients that
support it.

John