Re: Last Call: draft-dusseault-http-patch (PATCH Method for HTTP) to Proposed Standard

[Julian Reschke <julian.reschke at gmx.de>]

Nikunj R. Mehta wrote:
> This draft places unreasonable restriction on servers about processing 
> requests. Specifically, in §2.2,
>
> [[
> Concurrent modification: When a server receives multiple concurrent 
> requests to modify a resource, those requests SHOULD be queued and 
> processed in the order in which they are received. If a server is 
> incapable of queuing concurrent requests, all subsequent requests SHOULD 
> be rejected with a 409 (Conflict) until the first modification request 
> is complete.
> ]]
>
> RFC2616 describes the above status code (409) but not in the context of 
> a particular type of HTTP request. I fail to see why this draft has 
> mandated specific error codes and specific server behavior in response 
> to certain requests. It curtails server behavior without a good reason.
> ...

Indeed.

I think this is one of these requirements that would get ignored in 
practice when it makes sense (for instance, if the patch request has the 
semantics of "append a line of text to a log resource").

It would be better to rewrite this things in terms of advice what a 
server might do, not as a normative requirement (or, not to mention it 
at all).

Nikunj: you really should include the mailing list.

BR, Julian