Re: How could RDDL be distributed ?

[Michael Mealling <michael@bailey.dscga.com>]

On Tue, Jan 16, 2001 at 05:21:59PM +0000, Miles Sabin wrote:
> Mark Baker wrote,
> > Miles Sabin wrote:
> > > The problem I want a solution to is,
> > > 
> > >   I have a public ID/system ID/URI for this DTD, external 
> > >   entity, schema, RDDL doc, etc.; find me a server which can 
> > >   give me an authoritative copy (in the case of a URI maybe a 
> > >   mirror of the main server).
> > >
> > > or maybe rather than finding a server I just want the
> > > authoritative copy itself.
> >
> > Or a cached copy?
> 
> Indeed ... I'd like to see distribution and replication reaching
> all the way back to the client, in a similar way to HTTP caches
> or DNS resolvers.

Yes. You eventually want your client to be able to make intelligent
choices about how it uses cached/replicated resources. If the
information never makes it back to the client then there's no
way for the client to be improved...

> > Why bother with RESCAP when HTTP was designed to do this?  For 
> > the disconnected example, set up a HTTP proxy cache on your 
> > laptop, configure your browser to use it, browse to resource so 
> > it may be cached, and there you go.  Other user agents on the 
> > laptop can be configured to use the proxy too (e.g. JDK).
> 
> Unfortunately I don't think HTTP is a good fit here. Bear in
> mind that there are serious security issues here ... malicious
> subsitition of bogus DTDs/Schemas could be a serious problem.
> The HTTP solution to this would be HTTPS with server side
> certification. Fine, but we have a problem: in many cases won't
> be able to change authoritative URIs from the http: scheme to
> the https: scheme. I guess this is particularly true in the
> case of documents hanging off the end of namespace URIs.

Yep. You could use HTTP but you would have to divorce the use
of HTTP from the actual URI itself (i.e. a proxy instead of 
a simple cache). 

-MM

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