Re: [xdi] [External] Connection

On Jul 6, 2012, at 6:53 AM, Barnhill, William [USA] wrote:

I propose that rather than deciding which methods to explicitly support, we instead create a generic authentication mechanism, i.e. something like SASL. If XDI messaging were a connection-oriented protocol then I would suggest an XDI binding of the SASL abstraction layer. However, to my knowledge XDI messaging has always been, and is intended to remain, a connectionless protocol (or more precisely a message-oriented protocol).

I strongly feel that it will turn out to be advantageous to maintain connections, and that we should anticipate this. I realize we want to get the simplest case (no connection, minimal HTTP methods/codes, minimal authentication) out the door quickly, but can we give this a little thought now? It may be as simple as numbering messages and responses so that the client knows which response was to which message, or only sending responses in order received. Is it clear where a message ends - do we have a clear end of message marker?

xdi message