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Why a new protocol?
Existing protocols cover a number of different tasks.
- Mail protocols allow the transfer of transient messages from a single
author to a small number of recipients, at the request of the author.
- File transfer protocols allow the transfer of data at the request
of either the sender or receiver, but allow little processing of the
data at the responding side.
- News protocols allow the broadcast of transient data to a wide audience.
- Search and Retrieve protocols allow index searches to be made, and
allow document access. Few exist: Z39.50 is one and could be extended
for our needs.
The protocol we need for information access ( HTTP ) must provide
- A subset of the file transfer functionality
- The ability to request an index search
- Automatic format negotiation.
- The ability to refer the client to another server
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Tim BL
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