"Tickets" and XML-RPC authentication

[Magnus Lie Hetland]

If I have only one server/service, and that service takes care of its
own authentication (i.e. no Kerberos-like stuff), is there any point
to using a ticket/cookie-based system?

In other words, is there any point to doing this:

  ticket = server.authenticate('username', 'password')
  server.performService(ticket, some, other, params)

rather than

  server.performService('username', 'password', some, other, params)

?

I see the Advogato XML-RPC interface uses a ticket (or, as they call
it, a cookie) like in the first example. They don't explain why, and I
can't see any good reason, except perhaps making the client code a
tiny bit simpler... But you could always do something like

  ticket = {'user': 'foobar', 'pass': 'babar'}

anyway, so...

(Perhaps there is some session tracking going on?)

Any thoughts?

--
Magnus Lie Hetland                                  The Anygui Project
http://hetland.org                                  http://anygui.org