Subject: Re: [alto] Interop question: How strict should a server be?

From: "Y. Richard Yang" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2013 17:00:21 -0400

Hi Wendy,

I am not sure if there is a precise answer to your question. In an ideal,
simplistic setting, rejecting a non-conforming request is the correct
behavior. On the other hand, we have the Postel's Law saying that your
server accepting the request, despite that the request misses some
parameters, is reasonable, as long as there is a reasonable interpretation.

Richard

On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 9:48 AM, Wendy Roome <[email-masked]>wrote:

> I just discovered that the current draft requires the client to provide
> the cost-type and cost-mode parameters for a filtered cost map request.
> Early drafts said they were optional, with defaults of routingcost and
> numerical. I hadn't noticed the change, so my ALTO server still treats
> them as optional.
>
> As a result, my server accepts requests that other servers reject. Clients
> may think that those other servers are broken, while in reality, my server
> is incorrect. Some of you may recall a parallel with the browser wars of
> the 90s. Internet Explorer tolerated common HTML errors, while Netscape
> didn't. Pages that looked fine in Explorer didn't work in Netscape, so
> users (and some developers!) thought that Netscape wasn't working.
>
> So here's my question for the group: how strictly should a server enforce
> such rules? And should our interop tests check for strict enforcement of
> required parameters?
>
>         - Wendy Roome
>
>
>
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