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The whole "GETs must be side effect free" is a spec bug as far as I'm concerned. I can understand saying that they should be idempotent but besides opening the door to a bunch of metaphysical discussions aboutt "what exactly constitutes a side effect" I don't see what purpose that part of the spec serves.
________________________________
From: Mike Champion [mailto:mc@xegesis.org]
Sent: Thu 7/31/2003 8:57 AM
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] more politics
On Thu, 31 Jul 2003 11:23:15 -0400, John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
wrote:
> Norman Walsh scripsit:
>
>> What if the GET drops a can of coke on your desk?
>
> Short of matter replication (Star Trek or Drexler varieties), it can't do
> that. If the can is brought from somewhere else, that's a side effect,
> and GETs have to be idempotent and therefore side-effect-free.
Whoop! Whoop! Permathread warning ...
Uhh, GET's are *supposed* to be side-effect free, but that's not enforced
by anything I'm aware of in a typical HTTP implementation. I'm not at all
sure that's true on the wild wild web, very definitely not in the case of
pay-by-the-kilobyte wireless plans that have (well, "had" since I have an
unlimited plan now) the side-effect of running up my cellphone bill every
time I do a GET. Likewise, A little View Source expedition on Amazon.com
shows a lot of "method=get" forms that seem to have what I would call side
effects. (Fortunately, One-click ordering is not implemented with GET, but
it *could* from a mechanical point of view, no?).
So, I assert that there is no real-world software reason why clicking on a
link could not result in a can of Coke being delivered to one's desk,
although that would clearly be a Bad Thing in terms of the Webarch and the
HTTP spec. Am I mistaken?
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