>  From: Didier PH Martin [mailto:martind@[...].com]
>  Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2002 4:08 PM
>  To: Alaric Snell; Joshua Allen; Julian Reschke; xml-dev@[...].org
>  Subject: Re: [xml-dev] What does SOAP really add?
> 
> 
>  Hi Alaric,
> 
>  Alaric said:
>  > I always felt that XSLT was intended to be purely functional, a language
>  > without side effects - I don't remember seeing a defined operational
>  > semantics (saying what order actions are taken in), just denotational
>  (saying
>  > where information is taken from and what is done to it) :-)
>  > Putting POST capability into XSLT would break this, since (depending on
>  the
>  > XSLT engine in use) a document-post(url) might cause zero, one, or any
>  number
>  > of actual POSTs unless that function alone had a partial operational
>  > semantics defined... which would be a bit hairy
> 
>  Didier replies:
>  Can you explain to me how an HTTP POST brings more side effects
>  than an HTTP
>  GET. Off course, when used in the context of the "document" function (or

Sure.

HTTP GET is supposed to be a side-effect free operation. HTTP POST isn't.

>  anything else having the same intent: fetching an XML document). The basic
>  goal of any construct like the "document" function is to fetch an XML
>  document. Any other construct that would replace/expand it, would have the
>  same intent. So, I am anxious to read your arguments of how an HTTP POST
>  will bring more side effects than an HTTP GET (in the context of
>  fetching an
>  XML document and incorporating it into an infoset). This will expand my
>  knowledge :-)

I think the TAG would argue that if you have a POST operation which is
side-effect free, you should have made it a GET in the first place.


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