Murray,
On Sep 22, 2005, at 4:27 PM, Spork, Murray wrote:
> OTOH I share concerns that the REST coordination model ("hypertext
> as the engine of application state") will not be sufficient for
> complex process-oriented business transactions (as stated by Keith
> Below)
[this is a real question, not an attempt to be difficult]
What do you have in mind when you say 'complex process-oriented
business transactions'?
To me a transaction means (in the context of these discussions) a
sequence of operations that somehow belong together. IMHO a
transaction is essentially allways procedural (even if you call it
workflow and express it in any of the BPxx languages). I think it is
allways about doing this and that in such and such sequence.
Having said that, what does the 'process oriented' add in your
sentence? Are there transactions that are not processes (or parts of
processes)?
Regarding REST and its coordination model: I do not think that a
networked system that follows the REST style does not allow
procedural code to achieve certain sequences of HTTP method
invocations - somewhere you gotta put your application logic. I see
no contradiction between REST being an architectural style that
constrains the interface of the components of the system and the fact
that you have to have sequences of operations between the components.
What REST's coordination model does is to decouple client and server
in a way that they need to make no assumptions about each other than
to agree on the same message type. They especially need not make
assumptions about each other's state machine, because the server will
communicate the next possible states that the client can proceed to
AT RUNTIME via hypermedia links.
Does your statement which I quoted above mean that you think that for
complex transactions the components must know about each other's
state machines before they engage in the transaction?
Jan
________________________________________________________________________
_______________
Jan Algermissen, Consultant & Programmer
http://jalgermissen.com
Tugboat Consulting, 'Applying Web technology to enterprise IT'
http://www.tugboat.de
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