Name: nt126004 Date: 03/06/2003


A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
I am posting this report in reaction to an earlier bug report (#4394588) that was marked as "Closed, will not be fixed". The suggested work-around and the evaluation on this bug report do not fully address the problem.

The fact of the matter is that with the current implementation WebStart does not accept all legal URLs to be used when specifying the location of the JNLP descriptor. The issue reported in bug #4394588 is only one example of this - namely that URLs containing question marks cause an internal error in WebStart.

As far as I can determine, the cause of this internal error is that WebStart uses a caching technique that is not general enough. The URLs for the JNLP descriptor and for the codebase are used as path names in the filesystem. This means that most of the path name limitations of the filesystem propagate to limitations in the domain of valid URLs. Furthermore, since such filesystem limitations are inherently platform specific, this results in different behaviour on different platforms. As an example, WebStart on MacOS X does accept a URL with a question mark simply because the filesystem on MacOS X allows question marks in a path name.

I would therefore like to suggest that you reconsider the caching scheme in WebStart entirely. It should not be limited by the path name limitations of the filesystem. The ultimate goal of this RFE is to allow *any* legal URL to be used when specifying a JNLP descriptor.

JUSTIFICATION :
1) WebStart should not put limits on the domain of valid URLs used for specifying the JNLP descriptor and the codebase. All legal URLs should be allowed.

2) WebStart should perform consistently on different platforms.

3) Developers should have the freedom to specify any kind of URL when using WebStart. E.g., in some portal frameworks it is simply not feasible to put limitations on the valid URLs. Specifying URLs with parameters is often necessary.
(Review ID: 182132)
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