Hi Devs, As you know I am working on adding social features to PhotArk in the rest branch. To proceed further with the implementation, I have to add the social features in the UI. When working on this, I came across the requirement of exposing the back-end functionalities as REST services. As you know, implementation in the trunk uses Apache Tuscany to integrate and expose the functionality as JSON-RPC. Similarly in the rest branch we have the requirement of exposing the back-end functionality as REST services. For this purpose, I looked into three options: (1) Apache Shindig [0] (2) Apache Tuscany [1] (3) Apache Wookie [2]
As we have discussed earlier in the mailing list [3], Apache Shindig provides a reference implementation for the OpenSocial specification and provide JSON-RPC & REST APIs. But these APIs are only limited to the concepts/services in the OpenSocial specification and currently there seems to be no plans for extending further. So, using Apache Shindig, we can integrate the back-end social features as REST services; but it is only limited to this purpose. Since in the context of PhotArk, there are several other functionalities/concepts like Albums, etc, using Shindig will not cater for all the requirements. On the other hand, Apache Tuscany, can be used to expose the functionalities as REST services without any limitations and it's usage in the PhotArk trunk assures that it can satisfy all the requirements in PhotArk. Apaceh Wookie also provides REST API. But it is particularly designed to facilitate building widgets. Similar to Shindig, Wookie also has limited support for converting all the functionalities in PhotArk into REST services. Even though Wookie has the support for UI widgets, I do not see any plans to make PhotArk as a widget based application in the near future. So the REST integration facility provided by Wookie is limited in the context of PhotArk. After analyzing these three options, Apache Tuscany seems to be promising for me, to support all the requirements of PhotArk, related to exposing REST services. I kindly invite you all to proceed further with this discussion. Your valuable input to this discussion is highly appreciated. Looking forward to hear from you all. [0] http://shindig.apache.org/ [1] http://tuscany.apache.org/ [2] http://incubator.apache.org/wookie/ [3] http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg01141.html Thanks, ~Umashanthi
