[decentralization] Re: REST and POST

[Tony Kimball]

Quoth Mark Baker on Thursday, 23 August:
: Invoking GET means that you can
: *assume* that the state doesn't change because of your GET (even though
: the server can change the state, the client won't care).

That is a prescriptive interpretation of the standard, not a
description of prevaling reality.

: Do you really want to have to go to the trouble of deploying this?
: How will existing browsers know to do this?  How will I represent one of
: these things in a TV ad?

Does my application care about the answers to these questions?

: See that "axiom" again.  If there's another idempotent method, how do
: we know which one to use for a given URL?

GET HEAD PUT and DELETE are all idempotent.
You know for the same reason that you know what url to use.

: Tough nuts! 8-) GET's out of the bag, and working very well.

And not idempotent in reality, only in a grammarian's ideal world.