Re: DIME Use Case?

David Buksbaum <[email protected]> writes:
> We did do performance analysis against SOAP over HTTP and SOAP over
> SMTP. In both cases, we were able to get a significant performance boost
> with SOAP over DIME. The are where the gains were made had little to do
> with MIME though. They had to do with connection startup and
> handshaking, and pulling the block off the wire on the other side.
>
> Some of the benefits of DIME is that it is not request response. It is a
> simple packet that encapsulates data. HTTP is request response, and the
> direction of data is often fixed. Using SOAP over DIME allowed us to do
> request, response, and events over the same pipe without any 'tricks' or
> complexity.
There seems to me to be some layer confusion here: DIME is a packaging
format, not a transport protocol. HTTP and SMTP are transport protocols.
It sounds like you've invented (but not completely specified) some
simple transport protocol of the form of: open up a TCP channel and
shove DIME messages down it and let the upper level application
worry about the semantics. True?

It would be nearly as straightforward to define and implement an
analagous protocol with MIME replacing DIME. Again, what value is
DIME adding to the picture?

-Ekr

--
[Eric Rescorla                                   [email protected]]
                http://www.rtfm.com/