Re: protocol explosion (was asynchronous execution, was Re: implementing a set of queue-processing servers)

On Friday, Nov 22, 2002, at 02:49 Europe/London, Gunther Birznieks 
wrote:
>
> I disagree. I think it depends on the protocol. A well designed 
> protocol for an application will spread and stand the test of time. 
> Sometimes the protocol doesn't have to be well designed, but just that 
> it's standard can help tremendously.
>
> eg if we were a world that said HTTP is "it" and we should do 
> everything over HTTP, then would you really see SMTP over HTTP? SNMP 
> over HTTP? telnet over HTTP? Why?
>
> This doesn't really make sense to me.

[OT, because I know this isn't really your point]

As someone who's entire job revolves around SMTP these days, I'd love 
to see mail go over HTTP. SMTP's got no concept of negotiation. It's 
got little in the way of versioning (HELO vs EHLO). It's got no 
permanent redirect (e.g. [email protected] is now 
[email protected]). It's got very weak handling of binary 
data. Writing mail server plugins is very non-standardised.

Don't get me wrong, SMTP is a great protocol, but HTTP is sometimes 
just *so* much nicer :-)

Matt.