Dependence on application layer protocols [was: Re: [Phoenix] Re: [Phoenix-commits] rev 17670 - public/ulysses/src/trunk/ulysses/prototypes/prototype1/src/chrome/content]

[Andreas Wuest]

Hi

On 8.9.2006 9:37 Uhr, Michael Wechner wrote:

> Andreas Wuest wrote:
>> Anyway, if you'd like to reingrate Neutron-Auth into Neutron, and make 
>> it independent of the underlying protocol, we should discuss this now. 
>> We should find out just how independent we want to be! If you want to 
>> completely decouple it from HTTP, then we had to introduce a further 
>> abstraction layer.
> 
> 
> what else than HTTP would make sense? I think Thomas had some ideas re 
> other protocols.

Well, e.g. file systems, FTP, etc.

But it should also be clear to everyone that we can't support every 
existing protocol. As Neutron is specified today, it incorporates 
exceptions. This requires an application layer protocol which is capable 
of dialogue-style communication, i.e. you can get a response back for 
any given request. File systems, e.g., are only capable of one-way 
communications.

What I want to say is the following: we have to think about just how 
generic Neutron should be. If it should run on every application layer 
protocol, we have to remove the need for two-way communication. If it 
should only run on two-way capable protocols, we have to remove the 
current dependency on HTTP header fields and status codes, and move 
Neutron-Auth back into Neutron. If we only want to peruse HTTP, then we 
should made that commitment.

-- 
Kind regards,
Andi