If you want to know something about an entity, you _request the information from it. As we like to be asynchronous, every _request must have the _tag variable set.

Typically, the response is a member of the _echo method family, if a mere acknowledgment is to be returned or a _status if some information has been queried; unless something went wrong – then _warning, _error or _failure may be appropriate.

We currently have an apparently redundant choice of _request_something and _request_do_something, but the purposes are different. The general rule is, _request_do_something is for clients talking to their identity whereas _request_something are interserver or other inter-entity communications.

Also consider, that in many situations requesting things may be the wrong approach to the problem. Especially if you are likely to start polling them periodically. In that case a push solution is probably more appropriate where the entity you need information from sends you _notices. You may have to go through a subscription for that.

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Methods