I sometimes get the feeling REST debate is another industry "Vietnam", similar to the eternal debates around object-relational mapping & impedence mismatches between RDBMS/SQL and objects. It started 16 years ago, hasn't quite stopped, and is even gone mainstream (Hibernate, Microsoft LINQ, etc.)
Having said this, some religious debates did push the industry forward in a certain direction (object orientation being a major one in the 1990's), for the better and the worse. For the better in how mainstream languages have increased in expressiveness. For the worse in how we try to apply every great idea as a palliative (reaclling the silly CORBA v. COM debates about which was 'truly OO').
I think there's a shift in perspective required plus a learning curve on all sides before we can distill the limitations and implications of a new idea, which is generally what prevents consensus... and until you have demonstrable & repeatable evidence, it likely is not even achievable. And even in the face of evidence, it's open to interpretation.
In the case of REST, advocates point to the web as the ultimate success story, but that's proven to be quite open to interpretation, as to how applicable it is to enterprise integration challenges. WSDL advocates point to partner networks that are generating real value and seem to scale with those specs (as Steve pointed to earlier).
Ours isn't the only field with this pattern of debate -- many economists barely agree on even what one could call "core concepts", due to the difficulty in experimentation. Not that they don't try. On the bright side for us, the amount of social damage caused by poor or incomplete economic theories far outweights that of the capital squandered on bad technology ;-)
Cheers
Stu
Having said this, some religious debates did push the industry forward in a certain direction (object orientation being a major one in the 1990's), for the better and the worse. For the better in how mainstream languages have increased in expressiveness. For the worse in how we try to apply every great idea as a palliative (reaclling the silly CORBA v. COM debates about which was 'truly OO').
I think there's a shift in perspective required plus a learning curve on all sides before we can distill the limitations and implications of a new idea, which is generally what prevents consensus... and until you have demonstrable & repeatable evidence, it likely is not even achievable. And even in the face of evidence, it's open to interpretation.
In the case of REST, advocates point to the web as the ultimate success story, but that's proven to be quite open to interpretation, as to how applicable it is to enterprise integration challenges. WSDL advocates point to partner networks that are generating real value and seem to scale with those specs (as Steve pointed to earlier).
Ours isn't the only field with this pattern of debate -- many economists barely agree on even what one could call "core concepts", due to the difficulty in experimentation. Not that they don't try. On the bright side for us, the amount of social damage caused by poor or incomplete economic theories far outweights that of the capital squandered on bad technology ;-)
Cheers
Stu
----- Original Message ----
From: Eric Newcomer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, July 7, 2006 6:59:59 AM
Subject: Re: [service-orientated-architecture] RESTful lightbulb
From: Eric Newcomer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, July 7, 2006 6:59:59 AM
Subject: Re: [service-orientated-architecture] RESTful lightbulb
At some point in the discussion it really needs to be recognized that no one size fits all, and that a purist approach to any problem is impractical.
I suppose this should lead us into a discussion around rules of thumb for when it's better to use one solution or another, but I worry that the religious aspect of software, which unfortunately still seems somewhat prevalent in the industry, may interfere with such a potential consensus.
Eric
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