Re: Atomicity in network protocols

On Sat, 16 Jul 2011 10:48:33 -0700, Don Y wrote:

The only difference (besides deferring the actual hardware configuration
dialog) between this approach and the current implementation is the
consequence of an incompatible SET command -- in one case, the client
knows about it as soon as it is attempted; in the other, the client gets
surprised by the fact that the transaction fails at some later time
(despite the fact that it *appeared* that the SET was going to succeed).

I believe that's inevitable if you support multiple clients and none of
them are allowed to hog the system.

The alternative is that, once you've "made an offer" (i.e. returned
information which implies that a particular operation will succeed), you
have to keep that offer open for as long as the client takes.

.