Re: BEEP vs Web hacks

I've finally found some time to respond to Mark Baker regarding his response to my missive on BEEPLite.

First, to his point regarding our discussion on the WSAWG list regarding the MONITOR method. My point remains that HTTP is not suited to extension of its methods because it requires centralized administration of the method names. You can't simply make up a new method like MONITOR and deploy it unless you go through the IETF to revise the HTTP specification. Unless you do, then there's no way that anyone could tell the difference between Mark's MONITOR method and mine (should I devise one) and yet they might be very different animals.

Second, to his question as to whether mod_pubsub is a hack, I would have to answer; yes it certainly feels like one to me.

I agree that working within the constraints of an existing architecture is much harder, but that's the point isn't it. HTTP wasn't designed to support pubsub. Just because some sharp
people can take the protocol and tweak it here and there to enable pubsub doesn't change that fact.

However, all that aside, I am curious about something else related to mod_pubsub. Sure, it makes use of HTTP GET as well as POST, but are GET and POST really the methods? I mean really... how is this any different than the way in which SOAP uses HTTP POST? do_method?