The WebSocket Protocol – Past Travails Are To Be Avoided The
WebSocket protocol is a new facility; originally conceived as
part of the HTML5 effort. Together with its applications
programming interface (API), the WebSocket protocol provides a
standard framework for ongoing communications between web
clients and servers. The authors of the protocol deserve kudos
for leveraging the existing HTTP/HTTPS infrastructure to provide
an extended-lifetime link between a web browser and one or more
web servers. However, the specification includes decisions that
need revision and deficiencies in drafting that beg correction.
In my opinion, these shortcomings constrain the specification
unnecessarily while realizing no commensurate benefits. There
are at least five areas of concern in the draft specification:
Many speak of how computer systems “evolve.” However, the
invocation of “evolution” is a split reference. Evolution has
two meanings: “unfolding over time;” or the biosciences meaning
of “speciation and decimation.”