Perhaps there's a need for my research after all.

Bill de Hora said (via Steve Loughran):

"The most advanced thinking that doesn't involve throwing out the Web is probably Rohit Khare's PhD thesis, which suggests an "eventing", or push style extension to the Web model. An early example of this approach where the server calls back to the connected client instead of the client initiating each time, called mod_pubsub is available as open source. One of HTTP's designers, Roy Fielding, is rumoured to be working on a new protocol, that could feature support for easing of the load on servers."

Oh, wait, I know those guys. Oh, yah, that's my research group! Wait, that's my research!

My only comment is that I'm not involved with Atom as much as I have could have been, but I definitely am well aware of MONITOR and WATCH extensions that both Rohit and Roy have proposed. (My interest isn't the syndication aspect, but in the protocol.) They both solve the same problem, but in markedly different ways.

My current endeavor is bringing the current generation of Serf up-to-speed as an extensible HTTP library. Once that's in place, I plan to use it as a platform for writing a new protocol engine for httpd. But, alas, I want to go about it the right way.

One side note that I think bears on this discussion: I haven't seen a lot of use of conditional GETs by the feed aggregators. They seem to be remarkably behind-the-times on this. It's an easy way to save bandwidth. But, yes, a notification system like as described in MONITOR or WATCH is what is ultimately needed. I don't think anyone who seriously spends time doing this stuff thinks otherwise. However, there are 'right' ways to do this. Ideally, Apache HTTP Server can help lead the way on deploying such a solution the 'right' way.

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