Re: [search-ws] [Issue] Server should not be asked to maintain clientstate

[Ashley Sanders <a.sanders@manchester.ac.uk>]

Farrukh Najmi wrote:

> Section 4.1 "Request Parameters" defines a resultSetTTL parameter which 
> seems to indicate that the server is expected to maintain session state 
> for the client between requests.
> Can someone please confirm this assumption. If this is true then this is 
> a violation of REST principals. It is also quite messy to implement in a 
> scalable manner.

Quoting from the SRU 1.2 web site, re resultSetTTL:

"The number of seconds for which the client requests that the result set 
created should be maintained. The server MAY choose not to fulfil this 
request, and may respond with a different number of seconds. If 
resultSetTTL is not supplied then the server will determine the value."

In other words resultSetTTL is completely optional and if a server
wants to act in stateless way then it is free to do so.

> I suggest we identify and remove all features requiring server to 
> maintain session state for the client between requests. Thanks.

I don't think there are any features that _require_ a server
to maintain state.

My personal opinion is that if you want to run a service in
a scalable manner, then having a stateful server is a must.
If we ran the Copac service with a stateless server it would
impose a much greater load on our hardware and provide an
even slower response to the user.

Ashley.

-- 
Ashley Sanders               a.sanders@manchester.ac.uk
Copac http://copac.ac.uk A Mimas service funded by JISC