Mike Taylor wrote:

> > > So my concrete proposal is simply that the client should send, as
> > > a part of the search request, a bit saying whether or not it wants
> > > the server to maintain a persistent result set.
> >
> > We explored all of this, in great depth, at our first meeting a year
> > ago.  There was strong sentiment not to do this as it would be a
> > futile effort to define negotiation that wouldn't work in practice
> > anyway.
>
> Why not?

This is my recollection of the thinking when we discussed it a year ago:
servers in general aren't  going to be flexible enough to alter their
behavior based on the user request, nor even to reject the request in
advance.

In other words, optimally, if you had such a flag, you'd want the server to
make the result set persistent if you asked it to; but lacking that, at
minimum, you'd want the sever to tell you if it cannot honor the request.
The thinking was that as a practical matter servers can't even do the
minumum, so a flag would not only be useless, it would be misleading.

I'm simply trying to recollect the thinking a year ago. The subject could be
revisited.

--Ray