http HEAD vs GET performance

Question

I am setting-up a REST web service that just need to answer YES or NO, as fast as possible.

Designing a HEAD service seems the best way to do it but I would like to

Answer 1

I found this reply when looking for the same question that requester asked. I also found this at http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec9.html:

The HEAD method is identical to GET except that the server MUST NOT return a message-body in the response. The metainformation contained in the HTTP headers in response to a HEAD request SHOULD be identical to the information sent in response to a GET request. This method can be used for obtaining metainformation about the entity implied by the request without transferring the entity-body itself. This method is often used for testing hypertext links for validity, accessibility, and recent modification.

It would seem to me that the correct answer to requester's question is that it depends on what is represented by the REST protocol. For example, in my particular case, my REST protocol is used to retrieve fairly large (as in more than 10K) images. If I have a large number of such resources being checked on a constant basis, and given that I make use of the request headers, then it would make sense to use HEAD request, per w3.org's recommendations.